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POEMS OF SHELLEY 



POEMS OF SHELLEY 

■l 

AN ANTHOLOGY 
IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 
POET'S DEATH THE 8th JULY 

1822 



RICHARD 

COBDEN-SANDERSON 

17 THAVIES INN 

1922 



•3 



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1 cWiU 



PREFATORY NOTE 



THIS ANTHOLOGY, in commemoration of the death 
of SHELLEY, is arranged in FIVE PARTS. In 
PART I (LOVE AND LIFE) are developed in 
rhythmic sequence the emotions of Dejection, Love, 
Longing, Despair, and Death. In PART II (ALAS- 
TOR), PART I is resumed in the life of a poet, 
a dream of youth, and is closed again in Death. In 
PART III (ADONAIS), the Painted Veil, which 
men miscall Life, is lifted and everywhere Life is 
seen to be immortal. In PART IV (THE EVER- 
LASTING UNIVERSE) the Poet, ' holding an 
unremitting intercourse with the everlasting universe 
of things — now dark, now glittering, now reflecting 
gloom, now lending splendour — renders and receives 
fast influencings ' ; and at one time interprets Nature 
in terms of himself, his human mind, and at another 
himself in terms of Nature ; and in all her music, 
' from the moan of thunder to the song of night's 
sweet bird,' his voice is heard. In PART V (MAN 
EMANCIPATE) the Poet, insurgent, achieves for 
mankind the great vision, the Vision Sublime of 
MAN EMANCIPATE, in which 

The Painted Veil, by those who were called Life, 
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread, 
All men believed or hoped, is torn aside. 
The loathsome mask has fallen, the MAN remains ; 
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but MAN ; 
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, 
10 



Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
Over himself, just, gentle, wise, but MAN. 

PASSIONLESS ? no, yet free from guilt or pain 
Which were, for his will made or suffered them ; 
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, 
From chance, and death, and mutability, 
The clogs of that which else might over soar 
The loftiest star of unascended heaven, 
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. 



II 

This Arrangement might suffice as an Anthology 
of the essential Poems, ' folded in their own eternity ' ; 
but as the Editor would at the same time present a 
self-drawn image of the Poet, insatiate and aspiring, 
' insatiate till to love and live be one, one immortality, 
one annihilation,' he has prefixed to the Poems, as 
PROLOGUE, THE HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL 
BEAUTY, and as EPILOGUE has built out beyond 
them, as it were into the infinite, EPIPSYCHIDION, 
in which ' the height of Love's rare Universe ' 
approached the Poet's imagination reels and the Poet 
imagines himself to expire in an ecstasy of bliss. 

L'Anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, 
e si crea nel infinito un Mondo 
tutto per essa. 

II 



Ill 

The Poet was born at Field Place in Sussex on the 
14th of August 1792 : and from Leghorn on the 8th 
of July 1822 'put out to sea.' Wrecked, the Poet's 
body was burnt, in the presence of Lord Byron, 
Trelawny, and Leigh Hunt, on the shore of the 
Mediterranean near to Via Reggio. Taken thence 
to Rome, in that ' high Capital of kingly Death ' the 
ashes, the grey ashes of the Poet, lie buried. 

But he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their time's decay 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON 



12 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Page 
PREFATORY NOTE 10 

PROEM : 

On a poet's lips I slept ... 22 

PROLOGUE: HYMN TO INTELLEC- 
TUAL BEAUTY 

The awful shadow of some unseen power 24 

POEMS 

PART I: LOVE AND DEATH 

First our pleasures die — and then . . 31 

i. STANZAS 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear . 32 

ii. TIME 

Unfathomable Sea .... 34 

iii. THE WORLD'S WANDERERS 

Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light 35 
, iv. TO THE MOON 

Art thou pale for weariness . . 36 

v. A DIRGE 

Rough wind, that moanest loud . . 37 

vi. THE SEASONS (The Revolt of Islam) 
The blasts of Autumn drive the winged 
seeds . ..... 38 

vii. AUTUMN 

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind 
is wailing ..... 39 



PART I : LOVE AND DEATH (continued) Page 
viii. DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 

Orphan Hours, the Year is dead . 40 

ix. SPRING (Prince Athanase) 

'Twas at the season when the Earth 
upsprings . . . . .41 

x. LOVE (Prince Athanase) 

Thou art the wine whose drunkenness 

is all 42 

xi. LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 

The fountains mingle with the river . 43 

xii. TO NIGHT 

Swiftly walk over the western wave . 44 

xiii. A BRIDAL SONG 

The golden gates of sleep unbar . . 46 

xiv. A LAMENT 

Swifter far than summer's flight . 47 

xv. A SERENADE 

I arise from dreams of thee . . 48 

xvi. FROM THE ARABIC 

My faint spirit was sitting in the light 49 

xvii. TO JANE 

One word is too often profaned . . 50 

xviii. TO THE SAME 

When passion's trance is overpast . 51 

xix. THE GIFT 

Ariel to Miranda. — Take . . 52 



PART I: LOVE AND DEATH (continued) Page 
xx. THE INVITATION 

Best and brightest, come away . 
xxi. THE RECOLLECTION 

Now the last of many days 

xxii. LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY 
OF LERICI 

She left me at the silent time 
xxiii. SONG 

Rarely, rarely, comest thou 
xxiv. A LAMENT 

world ! O life ! O time ! 
xxv. LINES 

When the lamp is shattered 

xxvi. MUTABILITY 

The flower that smiles to-day 
xxvii. THE QUESTION 

1 dreamed that, as I wandered by the 
way . . . . 70 

xxviii. THE PAST 

Wilt thou forget the happy hours . 72 

xxix. TIME LONG PAST 

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead . 73 

xxx. DEATH 

That time is dead for ever, child . 74 

xxxi. THE DEAD 

They die — the dead return not. Misery 75 
16 



PART I : LOVE AND DEATH (continued) Page 

xxxii. A SUMMER EVENING 

The wind has swept from the wide 
atmosphere ..... 76 

PART II: ALASTOR 

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, 
quaerebam quid amarem, amans 
amare . . ... 79 

Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood 80 

PART III: ADONAIS 

'Ao-rrjp irpiv (lev iXajATres £vi tfliouriv ewo?, 105 
I weep for Adonais — he is dead . .106 

PART IV: THE EVERLASTING UNIVERSE . 

Listen, listen, Mary mine . . .126 

i. 1. HYMN OF APOLLO 

The sleepless hours who watch me as 
I He . . . . . . 127 

2. HYMN OF PAN 

From the forests and highlands . .129 

3. ARETHUSA 

Arethusa arose . . . 131 

4. THE CLOUD 

I bring fresh showers for the thirst- 
ing flowers . . . . 135 

5. SONG OF PROSERPINE 

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth . 139 

b 17 



PART IV: THE EVERLASTING UNIVERSE 

(continued) 
ii. i. ECHOES (Prometheus) Page 

Echoes we : listen . . .140 

2. CHORUS OF SPIRITS (Prometheus) 

The path thro' which that lovely 
twain ..... 142 

3. SONG OF SPIRITS (Prometheus) 

To the deep, to the deep . 145 

4. SPIRIT (Prometheus) 

My coursers are fed with the 
lightning . . . . . 147 

5. VOICE IN THE AIR (Prometheus) 

Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle . 148 

6. ASIA (Prometheus) 

My soul is an enchanted Boat. . 149 

iii. 1. MONT BLANC 

The everlasting universe of things . 150 

2. THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

Many a green isle needs must be . 156 

3. TO A SKYLARK 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit . .163 

4. ODE TO THE WEST WIND 

O wild west wind, thou breath of 
Autumn's being .... 
18 



PART V: MAN EMANCIPATE Page 

To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite 1 72 

i. 1. TO MARY SHELLEY (The Revolt 
of Islam) 
So now my summer task is ended, 
Mary. . . . 173 

2. THE SNAKE AND THE EAGLE 

When the last hope of trampled 
France had failed . . . .178 

ii. 1. CHORUS (Hellas) 

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever . 184 

2. ODE TO LIBERTY 

A glorious people vibrated again . 186 

3. LIBERTY 

The fiery mountains answer each 
other ..... 198 

4. CHORUS (Hellas) 

The world's great age begins anew . 199 

iii. 1. SPIRITS OF EARTH AND AIR 

(Prometheus) 
The pale stars are gone. . . 201 

2. FORMS AND SHADOWS OF DEAD 

HOURS (Prometheus) 
Here, Oh here .... 202 

3. SPIRITS OF EARTH AND AIR 

(Prometheus) 
Bright clouds float in Heaven . . 203 

l 9 



PART V : MAN EMANCIPATE (continued) Page 

4. SEMICHORUS OF HOURS (Prome- 

theus) 
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of 
Earth ...... 204 

5. CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS 

OF MIGHT AND PLEASURE 

(Prometheus) 
Weave the dance on the floor of the 
breeze ...... 205 

6. THE EARTH AND THE MOON 

(Prometheus) 
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the 
madness . . . . .211 

iv. DEMOGORGON (Prometheus) 

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy 
soul ...... 216 



EPILOGUE : EPIPSYCHIDION 




My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but 




few ..... 


222 


EPIPSYCHIDION 




Sweet Spirit. .... 


223 


Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's 




feet ..... 


245 


ENVOI : 




Music when soft voices die . 


248 


TABLE OF YEARS . . . . 


250 


20 





PROEM 



ON a poet's lips I slept 

Dreaming like a love-adept 

In the sound his breathing kept ; 

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 

But feeds on the aerial kisses 

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 

He will watch from dawn to gloom 

The lake-reflected sun illume 

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 

Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; 

But from these create he can 

Forms more real than living man, 

Nurslings of immortality ! 



22 



PROLOGUE 



PRO- THE awful shadow of some unseen Power 
LOGUE Floats, though unseen, amongst us, visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower ; 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance ; 
Like hues and harmonies of evening, 

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled, 
Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

II 

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 

Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? 

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river ; 

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown ; 
Why fear and dream and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom ; why man has such a scope 

For love and hate, despondency and hope. 



24 



Ill 

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever PRO- 

To sage or poet these responses given : LOGUE 

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavour ; 
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to 
sever, 
From all we hear and all we see, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone, like mists o'er mountains driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

IV 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. 

Thou messenger of sympathies, 

That wax and wane in lover's eyes ; 
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, 

Like darkness to a dying flame ! 

Depart not as thy shadow came : 

Depart not — lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 



25 



PRO- While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
LOGUE Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is 
fed; 
I was not heard, I saw them not : 
When, musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
All vital things that wake to bring 
News of birds and blossoming, 
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 

VI 

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand Hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned 
bowers 
Of studious zeal or love's delight 
Outwatched with me the envious night : 
They know that never joy illumed my brow 
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou — O awful Loveliness, 
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 
26 



VII 

The day becomes more solemn and serene PRO- 

When noon is past : there is a harmony LOGUE 

In Autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which through the Summer is not heard or seen, 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 

Thus let thy power, which like the truth 

Of Nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 

Its calm, to one who worships thee, 

And every form containing thee, 

Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



27 



POEMS 



PART I. LOVE AND DEATH 



I 

FIRST our pleasures die — and then 
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when 
These are dead, the debt is due, 
Dust claims dust — and we die too. 

II 

All things that we love and cherish, 
Like ourselves must fade and perish, 
Such is our rude mortal lot — 
Love itself would, did they not. 



31 



PART I THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, 

i The waves are dancing fast and bright ; 

Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
The purple noon's transparent might ; 
The breath of the moist earth is light, 
Around its unexpanded buds ; 

Like many a voice of one delight, 
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, 
The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's. 

I see the Deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds strown ; 
I see the waves upon the shore, 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 

I sit upon the sands alone ; 
The lightning of the noontide ocean 

Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion, 
How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 
Nor peace within nor calm around, 

Nor that content surpassing wealth 
The sage in meditation found, 
And walked with inward glory crowned ; 

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
Others I see whom these surround ; 

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

3* 



Yet now despair itself is mild, PART I 

Even as the winds and waters are ; i 

I could lie down like a tired child, 

And weep away the life of care 

Which I have borne and yet must bear, 
Till death like sleep might steal on me, 

And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

Some might lament that I were cold, 

As I, when this sweet day is gone, 
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 

Insults with this untimely moan ; 

They might lament — for I am one 
Whom men love not, — and yet regret ; 

Unlike this day, which, when the sun 
Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 



33 



PART I UNFATHOMABLE Sea, whose waves are years ; 
ii Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe 

Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! 

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow 
Claspest the limits of mortality ! 
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, 
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; 
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, 
Who shall put forth on thee, 
Unfathomable Sea ? 



34 



TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light PART I 

Speed thee in thy fiery flight, 111 

In what cavern of the night 

Will thy pinions close now ? 

II 

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray 
Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way, 
In what depth of night or day 

Seekest thou repose now ? 

Ill 

Weary wind, who wanderest 
Like the world's rejected guest, 
Hast thou still some secret nest 
On the tree or billow ? 



35 



PART I ART thou pale for weariness 

iv Of climbing Heaven and gazing on the earth, 

Wandering companionless 
Among the stars that have a different birth, 
And ever changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy ? 



36 



ROUGH wind, that moanest loud PART I 

Grief too sad for song ; v 

Wild wind, when sullen cloud 
Knells all the night long ; 

Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 

Bare woods, whose branches strain, 

Deep caves and dreary main, 
Wail, for the world's wrong ! 



37 



PART I THE blasts of Autumn drive trie winged seeds 

vi Over the earth ; next come the snows, and rain, 

And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads 
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train ; 
Behold ! Spring sweeps over the world again, 
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings ; 

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, 
And music on the waves and woods she flings, 
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things. 



38 



rHE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, PART I 
rhe bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, vii 

And the year 
3n the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves dead, 
Is lying ; 

Come, Months, come away, 

From November to May, 

In your saddest array ; 

Follow the bier 

Of the dead cold Year, 
\nd like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 

II 

rhe chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, 
rhe rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling 

For the Year ; 
rhe blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone 

To his dwelling ; 
y Come, Months, come away ; 

Put on white, black, and gray ; 

Let your light sisters play : 

Ye, follow the bier 

Of the dead cold Year, 
And make her grave green with tear on tear. 



39 



I 

PART I ORPHAN Hours, the Year is dead : 

viii Come and sigh, come and weep ! 

Merry Hours, smile instead, 
For the Year is but asleep. 
See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 
Mocking your untimely weeping. 

II 

As an earthquake rocks a corse 

In its coffin in the clay, 
So white Winter, that rough nurse, 

Rocks the death-cold Year to-day ; 
Solemn Hours ! wail aloud 
For your mother in her shroud. 

Ill 

As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 

So the breath of these rude days 
Rocks the Year : be calm and mild, 

Trembling Hours, she will arise 

With new love within her eyes. 

IV 

January gray is here, 

Like a sexton by her grave ; 

February bears the bier, 

March with grief doth howl and rave, 

And April weeps — but, O ye Hours, 

Follow with May's fairest flowers. 
40 



'TWAS at the season when the Earth upsprings PART I 

From slumber ; as a sphered angel's child, ix 

Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings, 

Stands up before its mother bright and mild, 

Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems, 

So stood before the Sun, which shone and smiled 

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams, 
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove 
Waxed green, and flowers burst forth like starry 
beams ; 

The grass in the warm sun did start and move, 
And sea-buds burst beneath the waves serene : 
How many a one, though none be near to love, 

Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen 
In any mirror, or the Spring's young minions, 
The winged leaves amid the copses green ; 

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions 
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast, 
And his own steps, and over wide dominions 

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast, 
More fleet than storms — the wide world shrinks below, 
When Winter and despondency are past. 

41 



PART I THOU art the wine whose drunkenness is all 
x We can desire, O Love ! and happy souls, 

Ere from thy vine the leaves of Autumn fall, 

Catch thee, and feed from their o'er-fl owing bowls 
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ; 
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls 

Investeth it ; and when the heavens are blue 
Thou fillest them ; and when the earth is fair 
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue 

Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear 
Beauty like some bright robe : thou ever soarest 
Among the towers of men, and as soft air 

In Spring, which moves the unawakened forest, 
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, 
Thou floatest among men ; and aye implorest 

That which from thee they should implore : the weak 

Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts 

The strong have broken : yet where shall any seek 

A garment whom thou clothest not ? 



42 



I 

THE fountains mingle with the river, PART I 

And the rivers with the ocean, xi 

The winds of Heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion ; 
Nothing in the world is single ; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle ; 

Why not I with thine ? 

II 

See the mountains kiss high Heaven, 

And the waves clasp one another ; 
No sister flower would be forgiven 

If it disdained its brother ; 
And the sunlight clasps the earth, 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea : 
What are all these kissings worth, 

If thou kiss not me ? 



43 



PART I SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, 

xii Spirit of Night ! 

Out of the misty eastern cave, 
Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 
Which make thee terrible and dear, 
Swift be thy flight ! 



II 



Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, 

Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day, 
Kiss her until she be wearied out, 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long sought ! 



Ill 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gene 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 
And the weary Day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 

I sighed for thee. 



44 



IV 

Thy brother Death came, and cried, PART I 

Wouldst thou me ? xii 

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy- eyed, 

Murmured like a noontide bee, 

Shall I nestle near thy side ? 

Wouldst thou me ? — And I replied, 
No, not thee ! 



Death will come when thou art dead, 

Soon, too soon : 
Sleep will come when thou art fled : 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night, 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 

Come soon, soon ! 



45 



PART I THE golden gates of sleep unbar 

xiii Where Strength and Beauty, met together, 

Kindle their image like a star 

In a sea of glassy weather. 
Night, with all thy stars look down, 

Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true. 
Let eyes not see their own delight ; 
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight 
Oft renew. 

II 

Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her ! 

Holy stars, permit no wrong ! 
And return to wake the sleeper, 

Dawn, ere it be long ! 
O joy ! O fear ! what will be done 
In the absence of the sun ! 

Come along ! 



4 6 



SWIFTER far than summer's flight, PART I 

Swifter far than youth's delight, xiv 

Swifter far than happy night, 

Art thou come and gone : 
As the wood when leaves are shed, 
As the night when sleep is fled, 
As the heart when joy is dead, 

I am left lone, alone. 

II 

The swallow summer comes again, 
The owlet night resumes her reign, 
But the wild-swan youth is fain 

To fly with thee, false as thou. 
My heart each day desires the morrow, 
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow, 
Vainly would my winter borrow 

Sunny leaves from any bough. 

Ill 

Lilies for a bridal bed, 
Roses for a matron's head, 
Violets for a maiden dead, 

Pansies let my flowers be ; 
On the living grave I bear 
Scatter them without a tear : 
Let no friend, however dear, 

Waste one hope, one fear for me. 

47 



I 

PART I I ARISE from dreams of thee 

xv In the first sweet sleep of night, 

When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright : 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 
Hath led me — who knows how ? 
To thy chamber window, sweet ! 



II 



The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream ; 
And the Champ ak odours fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart, 
As I must on thine, 
Oh beloved as thou art ! 

Ill 

Oh lift me from the grass ! 
I die ! I faint ! I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast, 
Oh press it close to thine again, 
Where it will break at last. 



4 8 



MY faint spirit was sitting in the light PART I 

Of thy looks, my love ; xvi 

It panted for thee like the hind at noon 
For the brooks, my love. 
Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight 
Bore thee far from me ; 
My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, 
Did companion thee. 

II 

Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 
Or the death they bear, 
The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove 
With the wings of care ; 
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, 
Shall mine cling to thee, 
Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 
It may bring to thee. 



49 



I 

PART I ONE word is too often profaned 

xvii For me to profane it, 

One feeling too falsely disdained 

For thee to disdain it. 
One hope is too like despair 

For prudence to smother, 
And pity from thee more dear 
Than that from another. 

II 

I can give not what men call love, 

But wilt thou accept not 
The worship the heart lifts above 

And the Heavens reject not ; 
The desire of the moth for the star, 

Of the night for the morrow, 
The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow ? 



50 



I 

WHEN passion's trance is overpast, PART I 

If tenderness and truth could last xviii 

Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep 
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, 
I should not weep, I should not weep ! 

II 

It were enough to feel, to see, 

Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly, 

And dream the rest — and burn and be 

The secret food of fires unseen, 

Couldst thou but be as thou hast been. 

Ill 

After the slumber of the year 
The woodland violets reappear, 
All things revive in field or grove, 
And sky and sea, but two, which move, 
And form all others, life and love. 



5' 



PART I ARIEL to Miranda.— Take 

xix This slave of Music, for the sake 

Of him who is the slave of thee, 
And teach it all the harmony 
In which thou canst, and only thou, 
Make the delighted spirit glow, 
Till joy denies itself again, 
And, too intense, is turned to pain ; 
For by permission and command 
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 
Poor Ariel sends this silent token 
Of love that never can be spoken ; 
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who, 
From life to lif e, must still pursue 
Your happiness ; for thus alone 
Can Ariel ever find his own. 
From Prospero's inchanted cell, 
As the mighty verses tell, 
To the throne of Naples, he 
Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 
Flitting on, your prow before, 
Like a living meteor. 
When you die, the silent Moon, 
In her interlunar swoon, 
Is not sadder in her cell 
Than deserted Ariel. 
When you live again on earth, 
Like an unseen star of birth 
Ariel guides you o'er the sea 

5* 



Of life from your nativity. PART I 

Many changes have been run, xix 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ariel still 

Has tracked your steps and served your 

will ; 
Now, in humbler, happier lot, 
This is all remembered not ; 
And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 
Imprisoned for some fault of his, 
In a body like a grave ; 
From you he only dares to crave, 
For his service and his sorrow, 
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. 
^f The artist who this idol wrought, 
To echo all harmonious thought, 
Felled a tree, while on the steep 
The woods were in their winter sleep, 
Rocked in that repose divine 
On the wind-swept Apennine ; 
And dreaming, some of Autumn past, 
And some of Spring approaching fast, 
And some of April buds and showers, 
And some of songs in July bowers, 
And all of love ; and so this tree, 
Oh that such our death may be ! 
Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 
To live in happier form again : 
From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 

S3 



PART I The artist wrought this loved Guitar, 

xix And taught it justly to reply, 

To all who question skilfully, 
In language gentle as thine own ; 
Whispering in enamoured tone 
Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
And summer winds in sylvan cells ; 
For it had learnt all harmonies 
Of the plains and of the skies, 
Of the forests and the mountains, 
And the many- voiced fountains ; 
The clearest echoes of the hills, 
The softest notes of falling rills, 
The melodies of birds and bees, 
The murmuring of summer seas, 
And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 
And airs of evening ; and it knew 
That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 
Which, driven on its diurnal round, 
As it floats through boundless day, 
Our world enkindles on its way — 
All this it knows, but will not tell 
To those who cannot question well 
The spirit that inhabits it ; 
It talks according to the wit 
Of its companions ; and no more 
Is heard than has been felt before, 
By those who tempt it to betray 
These secrets of an elder day : 

54 



But sweetly as its answers will PART I 

Flatter hands of perfect skill, xix 

It keeps its highest, holiest tone 
For our beloved Jane alone. 



55 



PART I BEST and brightest, come away ! 

xx Fairer far than this fair Day, 

Which, like thee to those in sorrow, 

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 

To the rough year just awake 

In its cradle on the brake. 

The brightest Hour of unborn Spring, 

Through the winter wandering, 

Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn 

To hoar February born ; 

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, 

It kissed the forehead of the Earth, 

And smiled upon the silent sea, 

And bade the frozen streams be free, 

And waked to music all their fountains, 

And breathed upon the frozen mountains, 

And like a prophetess of May 

Strewed flowers upon the barren way, 

Making the wintry world appear 

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 

^f Away, away, from men and towns, 

To the wild wood and the downs — 

To the silent wilderness 

Where the soul need not repress 

Its music lest it should not find 

An echo in another's mind, 

While the touch of Nature's art 

Harmonises heart to heart. 

Tf Radiant Sister of the Day, 

56 






Awake ! arise ! and come away ! PART I 

To the wild woods and the plains, xx 

And the pools where winter rains 

Image all their roof of leaves, 

Where the pine its garland weaves 

Of sapless green and ivy dun 

Round stems that never kiss the sun ; 

Where the lawns and pastures be, 

And the sandhills of the sea ; 

Where the melting hoar-frost wets 

The daisy-star that never sets, 

And wind-flowers and violets 

Which yet join not scent to hue, 

Crown the pale Year weak and new ; 

When the night is left behind 

In the deep east, dun and blind, 

And the blue noon is over us, 

And the multitudinous 

Billows murmur at our feet, 

Where the earth and ocean meet, 

And all things seem only one 

In the universal sun. 



57 



I 

PART I NOW the last day of many days, 

xxi All beautiful and bright as thou, 

The loveliest and the last, is dead, 
Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 
Up to thy wonted work ! come, trace 

The epitaph of glory fled : 
For now the earth has changed its face, 
A frown is on the Heaven's brow. 

II 

We wandered to the Pine Forest 

That skirts the Ocean's foam ; 
The lightest wind was in its nest, 

The tempest in its home. 
The whispering waves were half asleep, 

The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the bosom of the deep 

The smile of Heaven lay. 
It seemed as if the hour were one 

Sent from beyond the skies, 
Which scattered from above the sun 

A light of Paradise. 

Ill 

We paused amid the Pines that stood 
The giants of the waste, 

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude 
As serpents interlaced, 

And soothed by'every azure breath, 

58 



That under Heaven is blown, PART I 

To harmonies and hues beneath, xxi 

As tender as its own ; 
Now all the tree- tops lay asleep, 

Like green waves on the sea, 
As still as in the silent deep 

The ocean woods may be. 

IV 

How calm it was ! — the silence there 

By such a chain was bound 
That even the busy woodpecker 

Made stiller by her sound 
The inviolable quietness ; 

The breath of peace we drew 
With its soft motion made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 
There seemed from the remotest seat 

Of the white mountain waste, 
To the soft flower beneath our feet, 

A magic circle traced, — - 
A spirit interfused around, 

A thrilling silent life, 
To momentary peace it bound 

Our mortal nature's strife ; — 
And still I felt the centre of 

The magic circle there, 
Was one fair form that filled with love 

The lifeless atmosphere. 

59 



PART I We paused beside the pools that lie 

xxi Under the forest bough, 

Each seemed as 'twere a little sky 

Gulphed in a world below ; 
A firmament of purple light, 

Which in the dark earth lay, 
More boundless than the depth of night, 

And purer than the day : 
In which the lovely forests grew 

As in the upper air, 
More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any spreading there. 
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, 

And through the dark green wood 
The white sun twinkling like the dawn 

Out of a speckled cloud. 
Sweet views, which in our world above 

Can never well be seen, 
Were imaged by the water's love 

Of that fair forest green. 
And all was interfused beneath 

With an elysian glow, 
An atmosphere without a breath, 

A softer day below. 
Like one beloved, the scene had lent 

To the dark water's breast 
Its every leaf and lineament 

With more than truth exprest ; 
Until an envious wind crept by, 
60 



Like an unwelcome thought, PART I 

Which from the mind's too faithful eye xxi 

Blots one dear image out. 
Though thou art ever fair and kind, 

The forests ever green, 
Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind, 

Than calm in waters seen. 



61 



PART I SHE left me at the silent time 

xxii When the moon had ceased to climb 

The azure path of Heaven's steep, 
And, like an albatross asleep, 
Balanced on her wings of light, 
Hovered in the purple night, 
Ere she sought her ocean nest 
In the chambers of the West. 
She left me, and I stayed alone 
Thinking over every tone 
Which, though silent to the ear, 
The enchanted heart could hear, 
Like notes which die when born, but still 
Haunt the echoes of the hill ; 
And feeling ever — oh, too much ! 
The soft vibration of her touch, 
As if her gentle hand, even now, 
Lightly trembled on my brow ; 
And thus, although she absent were, 
Memory gave me all of her 
That even Fancy dares to claim : 
Her presence had made weak and tame 
All passions, and I lived alone 
In the time which is our own ; 
The past and future were forgot, 
As they had been, and would be, not. 
But soon, the guardian angel gone, 
The daemon reassumed his throne 
In my faint heart. I dare not speak 
62 



My thoughts ; but thus disturbed and weak PART I 

I sat and saw the vessels glide xxii 

Over the ocean bright and wide, 

Like spirit-winged chariots sent 

O'er some serenest element 

For ministrations strange and far ; 

As if to some Elysian star 

They sailed for drink to medicine 

Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. 

And the wind that winged their flight 

From the land came fresh and light, 

And the scent of winged flowers, 

And the coolness of the hours 

Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, 

Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay. 

And the fisher with his lamp 

And spear about the low rocks damp 

Crept, and struck the fish which came 

To worship the delusive flame. 

Too happy they, whose pleasure sought 

Extinguishes all sense and thought 

Of the regret that pleasure leaves, 

Destroying life alone, not peace ! 



63 



PART I RARELY, rarely, comest thou, 

xxiii Spirit of Delight ! 

Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
'Tis since thou art fled away. 

II 

How shall ever one like me 

Win thee back again ? 
With the joyous and the free 

Thou wilt scoff at pain. 
Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 

Ill 

As a lizard with the shade 

Of a trembling leaf, 
Thou with sorrow art dismayed ; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Reproach thee, that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou wilt not hear. 

IV 

Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure, 
Thou wilt never come for pity, 

Thou wilt come for pleasure ; 
Pity then will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 

6 4 



I love all that thou lovest, PART I 

Spirit of Delight ! xxiii 

The fresh Earth in new leaves drest, 
And the starry night ; 

Autumn evening, and the morn 

When the golden mists are born. 

VI 

I love snow, and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost ; 
I love waves, and winds, and storms, 

Every thing almost 
Which is Nature's and may be 
Untainted by man's misery. 

VII 

I love tranquil solitude, 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good ; 

Between thee and me 
What difference ? but thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 

VIII 

I love Love — though he has wings, 

And like light can flee ; 
But above all other things, 

Spirit, I love thee — 
Thou art love and life ! Oh come, 
Make once more my heart thy home. 
e 65 



I 

PART I O WORLD ! O life ! O time ! 

xxiv On whose last steps I climb 

Trembling at that where I had stood before ; 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 
No more — Oh never more ! 

II 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight ; 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
No more — Oh never more ! 



66 



WHEN the lamp is shattered PART I 

The light in the dust lies dead ; xxv 

When the cloud is scattered 
The rainbow's glory is shed. 

When the lute is broken, 
Sweet notes are remembered not ; 

When the lips have spoken, 
Loved accents are soon forgot. 

II 

As music and splendour 
Survive not the lamp and the lute, 

The heart's echoes render 
No song when the spirit is mute : 

No song but sad dirges, 
Like the wind in a ruined cell, 

Or the mournful surges 
That ring the dead seaman's knell. 

Ill 

When hearts have once mingled 
Love first leaves the well-built nest ; 

The weak one is singled 
To endure what it once possest. 

O Love ! who bewailest 
The frailty of all things here, 

Why choose you the frailest 
For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? 

6 7 



IV 

PART I Its passions will rock thee 

xxv As the storms rock the ravens on high 

Bright reason will mock thee, 
Like the sun from a wintry sky. 

From thy nest every rafter 
Will rot, and thine eagle home 

Leave thee naked to laughter, 
When leaves fall and cold winds come. 



68 



I 

THE flower that smiles to-day PART I 

To-morrow dies : xxvi 

All that we wish to stay 

Tempts and then flies ; 
What is this world's delight ? 
Lightning that mocks the night, 
Brief even as bright. 

II 

Virtue, how frail it is ! 

Friendship how rare ! 
Love, how it sells poor bliss 

For proud despair ! 
But we, though soon they fall, 
Survive their joy and all 
Which ours we call. 

Ill 

Whilst skies are blue and bright, 

Whilst flowers are gay, 
Whilst eyes that change ere night 

Make glad the day ; 
Whilst yet the calm hours creep, 
Dream thou — and from thy sleep 
Then wake to weep. 



6 9 



I 

PART I I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, 
xxvii Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, 

And gentle odours led my steps astray, 

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 

II 

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets ; 
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 

The constellated flower that never sets ; 

Faint oxlips ; tender bluebells, at whose birth 

The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets- 
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth — 

Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears, 

When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 

Ill 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, 

And ch erry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day ; 

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray ; 

And flowers azure, black and streaked with gold, 

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 

70 



IV 

And nearer to the river's trembling edge PART I 

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with xxvii 
white, 

And starry river-buds among the sedge, 

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 
With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 



Methought that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 
Were mingled or opposed, the like array 

Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours 
Within my hand ; and then, elate and gay, 

I hastened to the spot whence I had come, 

That I might there present it — Oh ! to whom ? 



71 



PART I WILT thou forget the happy hours 

xxviii Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, 

Heaping over their corpses cold 
Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? 
Blossoms which were the joys that fell, 
And leaver the hopes that yet remain. 

II 

Forget the dead, the past ? Oh yet 
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, 
Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 
And with ghastly whispers tell 
That joy, once lost, is pain. 



72 



I 

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead PART I 

Is Time long past. xxix 

A tone which is now forever fled, 

A hope which is now forever past, 

A love so sweet it could not last, 
Was Time long past. 

II 

There were sweet dreams in the night 

Of Time long past : 
And, was it sadness or delight, 
Each day a shadow onward cast 
Which made us wish it yet might last, 

That Time long past. 

Ill 

There is regret, almost remorse, 

For Time long past. 
'Tis like a child's beloved corse 
A father watches, till at last 
Beauty is like remembrance, cast 

From Time long past. 



73 



I 

PART I THAT time is dead for ever, child, 

xxx Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! 

We look on the past 
And stare aghast 
At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, 
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled 
To death on life's dark river. 

II 

The stream we gazed on then, rolled by ; 
Its waves are unreturning ; 

But we yet stand 

In a lone land, 
Like tombs to mark the memory 
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee 
In the light of life's dim morning. 



74 



I 

THEY die— the dead return not. Misery PART I 

Sits near an open grave and calls them over, xx *i 

A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye. 

They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover, 
Which he so feebly calls : they all are gone ! 
Fond wretch, all dead ! Those vacant names alone, 
This most familiar scene, my pain, 
These tombs, alone remain. 

II 

Misery, my sweetest friend — oh, weep no more ! 

Thou wilt not be consoled : I wonder not ! 
For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door 

Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot 
Was even as bright and calm, but transitory ; 
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary ; 
This most familiar scene, my pain, 
These tombs, alone remain. 



75 



PART I THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 
xxxii Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray ; 
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair 
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day : 
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, 
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; 
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, 
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. 
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass 
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles 
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
Clothing in hues of Heaven thy dim and distant spire, 
Around whose lessening and invisible height 
Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, 
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, 
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things 

around, 
And mingling with the still night and mute sky 
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 

7 6 



Thus solemnised and softened, death is mild PART I 

And terrorless as this serenest night : xxxii 

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child 
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human 

sight 
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep 
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 



77 



PART II. ALASTOR : OR THE SPIRIT 
OF SOLITUDE 

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam 

quid amarem, amans 

amare. 



PART II EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood ! 
Alastor If our great Mother has imbued my soul 
With aught of natural piety to feel 
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; 
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, 
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; 
If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, 
And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs ; 
If Spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes 
Her first sweet kisses have been dear to me ; 
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast 

I consciously have injured, but still loved 
And cherished these my kindred : then forgive 
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw 
No portion of your wonted favour now ! 

II Mother of this unfathomable world ! 
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved 
Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched 
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, 
And my heart ever gazes on the depth 

Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 
In charnels and on coffins, where black death 
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, 
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, 
Thy messenger, to render up the tale 
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 
80 



When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, PART II 

Like an inspired and desperate alchymist Alastor 

Staking his very life on some dark hope, 

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks 

With my most innocent love, until strange tears, 

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 

Such magic as compels the charmed night 

To render up thy charge : and, though ne'er yet 

Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, 

Enough from incommunicable dream, 

And twilight phantasms, and deep noon- day thought, 

Has shone within me, that serenely now 

And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre 

Suspended in the solitary dome 

Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 

I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 

May modulate with murmurs of the air, 

And motions of the forests and the sea, 

And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 

Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 

THERE was a Poet whose untimely tomb 
No human hands with pious reverence reared, 
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds 
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid 
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness : 
A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden decked 
With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, 
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : 

f 81 



PART II Gentle, and brave, and generous, — no lorn bard 
Alastor Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : 
He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. 
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, 
And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined 
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, 
And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, 
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 

1T By solemn vision, and bright silver dream, 

His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 

And sound from the vast earth and ambient air 

Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 

The fountains of divine philosophy 

Fled not his thirsting lips ; and all of great, 

Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 

And knew. When early youth had passed, he left 

His cold fireside and alienated home 

To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. 

Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 

Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought 

With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 

His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 

He, like her shadow, has pursued where'er 

The red volcano overcanopies 

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 

With burning smoke ; or where bitumen lakes 

82 



On black bare pointed islets ever beat PART II 

With sluggish surge ; or where the secret caves, Alastor 

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs 

Of fire and poison, inaccessible 

To avarice or pride, their starry domes 

Of diamond and of gold expand above 

Numberless and immeasurable halls, 

Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 

Of pearl, and stones radiant with chrysolite. 

Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 

Than gems of gold, the varying roof of heaven 

And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims 

To love and wonder ; he would linger long 

In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, 

Until the doves and squirrels would partake 

From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, 

Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, 

And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er 

The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 

Her timid steps to gaze upon a form 

More graceful than her own. fl His wandering step, 

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 

The awful ruins of the days of old : 

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 

Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 

Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 

Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, 

8 3 



PART II Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
Alastor Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
Stupendous columns, and wild images 
Of more than man, where marble demons watch 
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
He lingered, poring on memorials 
Of the world's youth, through the long burning day 
Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon 
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, 
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time, 
fl Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, 
Her daily portion, from her father's tent, 
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole 
From duties and repose to tend his steps : 
Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe 
To speak her love : — and watched his nightly sleep, 
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath 
Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn 
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home 
Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. 
1f The Poet wandering on, through Arabie 
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, 
And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, 

8 4 



In joy and exultation held his way ; PART II 

Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within Alastor 

Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine 

Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, 

Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched 

His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep 

There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 

Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid 

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. 

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 

Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, 

Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 

His inmost sense suspended in its web 

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, 

And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 

Himself a poet. Soon the solemn mood 

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame 

A permeating fire : wild numbers then 

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs 

Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands 

Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp 

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins 

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. 

The beating of her heart was heard to fill 

The pauses of her music, and her breath 

Tumultuously accorded with those fits 

Of intermitted song. Sudden she arose, 

85 



PART II As if her heart impatiently endured 
Alastor Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned, 
And saw by the warm light of their own life 
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil 
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, 
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, 
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips 
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. 
His strong heart sank and sickened with excess 
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled 
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet 
Her panting bosom : she drew back awhile, 
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, 
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry 
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. 
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night 
Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep 
Like a dark flood suspended in its course, 
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain. 
11 Roused by the shock he started from his trance. 
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon 
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, 
The distinct valley and the vacant woods, 
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled 
The hues of Heaven that canopied his bower 
Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep, 
The mystery and the majesty of Earth, 
The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes 
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly 
86 



As ocean's moon looks on the moon in Heaven. PART II 

The spirit of sweet human love has sent Alastor 

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned 

Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues 

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ; 

He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! 

Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined 

Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost, 

In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, 

That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of death 

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, 

O Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, 

And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, 

Lead only to a black and watery depth, 

While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung, 

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales 

Hides its dead eye from the detested day, 

Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delighted realms ? 

This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart ; 

The insatiate hope which it awakened stung 

His brain even like despair. 1T While daylight held 

The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 

With his still soul. At night the passion came, 

Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, 

And shook him from his rest, and led him forth 

Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasped 

In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast 

Burn with the poison, and precipitates 

Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, 

87 



PART II Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight 
|Alastor O'er the wide aery wilderness; thus driven 
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, 
Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 
Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, 
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, 
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues 
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; 
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs 
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, 
Day after day, a weary waste of hours, 
Bearing within his life the brooding care 
That ever fed on its decaying flame. 
And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, 
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, 
Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand 
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; 
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone, 
As in a furnace burning secretly, 
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 
Who ministered with human charity 
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe 
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 
Encountering on some dizzy precipice 
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind, 
88 



With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet PART II 

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused Alastor 

In its career ; the infant would conceal 

His troubled visage in his mother's robe 

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 

To remember their strange light in many a dream 

Of after-times ; but youthful maidens, taught 

By nature, would interpret half the woe 

That wasted him, would call him with false names 

Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand 

At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 

Of his departure from their father's door. 

11 At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 

He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 

Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged 

His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 

Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 

It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings 

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 

High over the immeasurable main. 

His eyes pursued its flight. Thou hast a home, 

Beautiful bird ; thou voyagest to thine home, 

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 

And what am I that I should linger here, 

With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 

Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 

To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 

8 9 



PART II In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and Heaven 
Alastor That echoes not my thoughts ? A gloomy smile 
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly 
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, 
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, 
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 
11 Startled by his own thoughts he looked around. 
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight 
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. 
A little shallop floating near the shore 
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints 
Swayed with the undulations of the tide. 
A restless impulse urged him to embark 
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves 
The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 
1F The day was fair and sunny ; sea and sky 
Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind 
Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 
Following his eager soul, the wanderer 
Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft 
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, 
And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea 
Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. 
1T As one that in a silver vision floats 
Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds 
90 



Upon resplendent clouds so rapidly PART 11 

Along the dark and ruffled waters fled Alastor 

The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, 

With fierce gusts and precipitating force, 

Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. 

The waves arose. Higher and higher still 

Their fierce necks writhed beneath the Tempest's 

scourge 
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. 
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war 
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast 
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven 
With dark obliterating course, he sate : 
As if their genii were the ministers 
Appointed to conduct him to the light 
Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate 
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on ; 
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; 
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day; 
Night followed, clad with stars. On every side 
More horribly the multitudinous streams 
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war 
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock 
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat 
Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam 

9 1 



PART II Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; 
Alastor Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave ; 
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass 
That fell, convulsing ocean : safely fled, 
As if that frail and wasted human form 
Had been an elemental god. U At midnight 
The moon arose : and lo ! the etherial cliffs 
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves, 
Bursting and eddying irresistibly, 
Rage and resound for ever. Who shall save ? 
The boat fled on, the boiling torrent drove, 
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, 
The shattered mountain overhung the sea, 
And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, 
The little boat was driven. A cavern there 
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths 
Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on 
With unrelaxing speed. Vision and Love ! 
The Poet cried aloud, I have beheld 
The path of thy departure. Sleep and death 
Shall not divide us long ! 11 The boat pursued 
The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone 
At length upon that gloomy river's flow ; 
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves 
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream 
The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, 
92 



Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, PART II 

Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell Alastor 

Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound 

That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass 

Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; 

Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, 

Circling immeasurably fast, and laved 

With alternating dash the gnarled roots 

Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms 

In darkness over it. V the midst was left, 

Reflecting, yet distorting, every cloud, 

A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. 

Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, 

With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, 

Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, 

Till on the verge of the extremest curve, 

Where, through an opening of the rocky bank, 

The waters overflow, and a smooth spot 

Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides 

Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink 

Down the abyss ? Shall the reverting stress 

Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? 

Now shall it fall ? A wandering stream of wind, 

Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail, 

And, lo ! with gentle motion, between banks 

Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 

Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark ! 

The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar 

With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. 

93 



PART II Where the embowering trees recede, and leave 
Alastor A little space of green expanse, the cove 

Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers 

For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, 

Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave 

Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, 

Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 

Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay 

Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed 

To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, 

But on his heart its solitude returned, 

And he forebore. Not the strong impulse hid 

In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, 

Had yet performed its ministry : it hung 

Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud 

Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods 

Of night close over it. 11 The noonday sun 

Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass 

Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence 

A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, 

Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks, 

Mocking its moans respond and roar for ever. 

The meeting boughs and implicated leaves 

Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led 

By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, 

He sought, in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, 

Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 

And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, 

Expanding its immense and knotty arms, 

94 



Embraces the light beech. The pyramids PART II 

Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame Alastor 

Most solemn domes within, and far below, 
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 
The ash and the acacia, floating, hang 
Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed 
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, 
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around 
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes, 
With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles, 
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, 
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, 
Uniting their close union : the woven leaves 
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, 
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable 
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns 
Beneath these canopies extend their swells, 
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms 
Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen 
Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jas- 
mine, 
A soul- dissolving odour, to invite 
To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, 
Silence and Twilight here, twin -sisters, keep 
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, 
Like vaporous shapes half seen ; beyond, a well, 
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, 
Images all the woven boughs above, 
And each depending leaf, and every speck 

95 



PART II Of azure sky, darting between their chasms ; 
Alastor Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves 
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star, 
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, 
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, 
Or gorgeous insect, floating motionless, 
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings 
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. 
11 Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld 
Their own wan light through the reflected lines 
Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth 
Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, 
Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, 
Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard 
The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung 
Startled, and glanced and trembled even to feel 
An unaccustomed presence, and the sound 
Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs 
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed 
To stand beside him, clothed in no bright robes 
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, 
Borrowed from aught the visible world affords 
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; 
But, undulating woods, and silent well, 
And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom 
Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, 
Held commune with him, as if he and it 
Were all that was : only, when his regard 
Was raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes, 

96 



Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, PART II 

And seemed with their serene and azure smiles Alastor 

To beckon him. 11 Obedient to the light 

That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing 

The windings of the dell. The rivulet, 

Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 

Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 

Among the moss with hollow harmony, 

Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 

It danced ; like childhood, laughing as it went : 

Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, 

Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 

That overhung its quietness. O stream ! 

Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 

Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? 

Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, 

Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs, 

Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course, 

Have each their type in me ; and the wide sky 

And measureless ocean may declare as soon 

What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 

Contains thy waters, as the universe 

Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched 

Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste 

I' the passing wind ! 11 Beside the grassy shore 

Of the small stream he went ; he did impress 

On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught 

Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one 

Roused by some joyous madness from the couch 

g 97 



PART II Of fever, he did move ; yet, not like him 
Alastor Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame 
Of his frail exultation shall be spent, 
He must descend. With rapid steps he went 
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow 
Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now 
The forest's solemn canopies were changed 
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. 
Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed 
The struggling brook : tall spires of windlestrae 
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, 
And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines 
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots 
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, 
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, 
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin 
And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes 
Had shone, gleam stony orbs : so from his steps 
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade 
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds 
And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued 
The stream, that with a larger volume now 
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell, and there 
Fretted a path through its descending curves 
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose 
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, 
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles 
In the light of evening, and its precipice, 
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 

9 8 



Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves, PART II 

Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues Alastor 

To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands 

Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, 

And seems, with its accumulated crags, 

To overhang the world : for wide expand 

Beneath the wan stars and descending moon 

Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, 

Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom 

Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills, 

Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge 

Of the remote horizon. The near scene, 

In naked and severe simplicity, 

Made contrast with the universe. A pine, 

Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy 

Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast 

Yielding one only response, at each pause, 

In most familiar cadence, with the howl 

The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams 

Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, 

Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, 

Fell into that immeasurable void, 

Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 

11 Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine 

And torrent were not all ; one silent nook 

Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, 

Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, 

It overlooked in its serenity 

The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. 

99 



PART^II It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile 
Alastor Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped 

The fissured stones with its entwining arms, 

And did embower with leaves for ever green, 

And berries dark, the smooth and even space 

Of its inviolated floor ; and here 

The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, 

In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay, 

Red, yellow, or aetherially pale, 

Rivals the pride of summer. ? Tis the haunt 

Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach 

The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, 

One human step alone, has ever broken 

The stillness of its solitude : one voice 

Alone inspired its echoes ; even that voice 

Which hither came, floating among the winds, 

And led the loveliest among human forms 

To make their wild haunts the depository 

Of all the grace and beauty that endued 

Its motions, render up its majesty, 

Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, 

And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, 

Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, 

Commit the colours of that varying cheek, 

That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. 

11 The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured 

A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge 

That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist 

Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank 

ioo 



Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star PART II 

Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very winds, Alastor 

Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice 

Slept, clasped in his embrace. O storm of death ! 

Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night : 

And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still 

Guiding its irresistible career 

In thy devastating omnipotence, 

Art king of this frail world ; from the red field 

Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, 

The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed 

Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 

A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls 

His brother Death. A rare and regal prey 

He hath prepared, prowling around the world, 

Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men 

Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, 

Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine 

The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. 

f When on the threshold of the green recess 

The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death 

Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, 

Did he resign his high and holy soul 

To images of the majestic past, 

That paused within his passive being now, 

Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe 

Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place 

His pale lean hands upon the rugged trunk 

Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone 

IOI 



PART II Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, 
Alastor Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink 
Of that obscurest chasm ; and thus he lay, 
Surrendering to their final impulses 
The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, 
The torturers, slept ; no mortal pain or fear 
Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, 
And his own being unalloyed by pain, 
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed 
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there 
At peace, and faintly smiling : his last sight 
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line 
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, 
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed 
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills 
It rests, and still, as the divided frame 
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, 
That ever beat in mystic sympathy 
With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still : 
And, when two lessening points of light alone 
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir 
The stagnate night : till the minutest ray 
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. 
It paused, it fluttered. But when Heaven remained 
Utterly black, the murky shades involved 
An image, silent, cold, and motionless, 
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. 
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams 
102 



That ministered on sunlight, ere the west PART II 

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame, Alastor 

No sense, no motion, no divinity ; 

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 

The breath of Heaven did wander, a bright stream 

Once fed with many-voiced waves, a dream 

Of youth, which night and time have quenched for 

ever, 
Still, dark and dry, and unremembered now. 
1F Oh for Medea's wondrous alchemy, 
Which, wheresoe'er it fell, made the earth gleam 
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale 
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! Oh that God, 
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice 
Which but one living man has drained, who now, 
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 
No proud exemption in the blighting curse 
He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 
Lone as incarnate death ! Oh that the dream 
Of dark magician in his visioned cave, 
Raking the cinders of a crucible 
For life and power, even when his feeble hand 
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law 
Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled 
Like some frail exhalation which the dawn 
Robes in its golden beams, ah ! thou hast fled ! 
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, 
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things 
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms 

103 



PART II And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth, 
Alastor From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 
In vesper low or joyous orison, 
Lifts still its solemn voice : but thou art fled ; 
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 
Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips 
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 
That image sleep in death, upon that form 
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear 
Be shed, not even in thought. Nor, when those hues 
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, 
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone 
In the frail pauses of this simple strain, 
Let not high verse, mourning the memory 
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe 
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery 
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 
And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. 
It is a woe too deep for tears, when all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, 
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ; 
But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 
104 



PART III. ADONAIS: AN ELEGY ON 
THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS 

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PART III I WEEP for Adonais— he is dead ! 
Adonais Oh weep for Adonais ! though our tears 

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 
And teach them thine own sorrow ! Say : With me 
Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! 

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 

When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies 

In darkness ? where was lorn Urania 

When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 

'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise 

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 

Rekindled all the fading melodies, 

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, 

He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death. 

Oh weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! 

Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed 

Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, 

Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 

For he is gone, where all things wise and fair 

Descend ; Oh dream not that the amorous Deep 

Will yet restore him to the vital air ; 

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our 

despair. 
1 06 



Most musical of mourners, weep again ! PART III 

Lament anew, Urania ! He died, Adonais 

Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, 

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, 

Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite 

Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, 

Into the gulf of death : but his clear sprite 

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the Sons of Light. 

Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Not all to that bright station dared to climb ; 
And happier they their happiness who knew, 
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 
In which suns perished ; others more sublime, 
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, 
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; 
And some yet live, treading the thorny road 
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene 
abode. 

But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, 
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, 
And fed with true love tears, instead of dew ; 
Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, 
The bloom, whose petals, nipt before they blew, 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast. 

107 



PART III To that high Capital, where kingly Death 
Adonais Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 

He came ; and bought, with price of purest breath, 

A grave among the eternal. Come away ! 

Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 

Is yet his fitting charn el-roof, while still 

He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 

Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 

Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 

He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 

Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 

The shadow of white Death, and at the door 

Invisible Corruption waits to trace 

His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; 

The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 

Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 

So fair a prey, till darkness and the law 

Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 

Oh weep for Adonais ! The quick Dreams, 

The passion-winged Ministers of thought, 

Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 

Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 

The love which was its music, wander not, 

Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, 

But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn 

their lot 
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. 
108 



And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, PART III 

And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries ; Adonais 

Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; 

See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 

Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 

A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain. 

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 

She knew not 'twas her own ; as with no stain 

She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 

One from a lucid urn of starry dew 

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them ; 

Another dipt her profuse locks, and threw 

The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 

Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 

Another in her wilful grief would break 

Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 

A greater loss with one which was more weak ; 

And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 

Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
And pass into the panting heart beneath 
With lightning and with music ; the damp death 
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, 
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its 
eclipse. 

109 



PART III And others came, Desires and Adorations, 
Adonais Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 

Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations 

Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies ; 

And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 

Came in slow pomp : the moving pomp might seem 

Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 

All he had loved, and moulded into thought, 

From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, 

Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 

Her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound, 

Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 

Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 

Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 

Pale ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 

And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. 

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 

And feeds her grief with his remembered lay ; 

And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 

Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, 

Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day, 

Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 

Than those for whose disdain she pined away 

Into a shadow of all sounds : a drear 

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 

no 



Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down PART III 

Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Adonais 

Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown, 

For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 

To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, 

Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 

Thou, Adonais : wan they stand and sere 

Amid the faint companions of their youth, 

With dew all turned to tears ; odour, to sighing ruth. 

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale, 
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain ; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could sc ale 
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, 
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 
As Albion wails for thee : the curse of Cain 
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest ! 

Ah, woe is me ! Winter is come and gone, 
But grief returns with the revolving year ; 
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone ; 
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear ; 
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier ; 
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 
And build their mossy homes in field and brere ; 
And the green lizard and the golden snake, 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 

in 



PART III Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean 
Adonais A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst, 
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
From the great morning of the world when first 
God dawned on Chaos : in its stream immersed 
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light ; 
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst, 
Diffuse themselves and spend, in love's delight, 
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 

The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, 
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death 
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath. 
Nought we know dies. Shall that alone which knows 
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
By sightless lightning ? th' intense atom glows 
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 

Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 
But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 
The actors or spectators ? Great and mean 
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. 
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, 
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year 
to sorrow. 

112 



He will awake no more, oh, never more ! PART III 

Wake thou, cried Misery, childless Mother, rise Adonais 

Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, 

A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs. 

And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 

And all the Echoes whom their sister's song 

Had held in holy silence, cried : Arise ! 

Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, 

From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. 

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs 

Out of the East and follows, wild and drear, 

The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 

Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, 

Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 

So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania ; 

So saddened round her like an atmosphere 

Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way 

Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 

Out of her secret Paradise she sped, 

Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, 

And human hearts, which, to her aery tread 

Yielding not, wounded the invisible 

Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell : 

And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than 

they, 
Rent the soft Form they never could repel, 
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 

H 113 



PART III In the death- chamber for a moment Death, 
Adonais Shamed by the presence of that living Might, 
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light 
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 
Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, 
As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
Leave me not ! cried Urania : her distress 
Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her 
vain caress. 

Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again : 

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ; 

And in my heartless breast and burning brain 

That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, 

With food of saddest memory kept alive, 

Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 

Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 

All that I am to be as thou now art ! 

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart ! 

O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 

Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 

Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart 

Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 

Defenceless as thou wert, oh ! where was then 

Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? 

Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 

Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 

The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer. 

114 



The herded wolves, bold only to pursue ; PART III 

The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead ; Adonais 

The vultures, to the conqueror's banner true, 

Who feed where desolation first has fed, 

And whose wings rain contagion ; how they fled, 

When, like Apollo from his golden bow, 

The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 

And smiled ! The spoilers tempt no second blow, 

They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. 

The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 

Is gathered unto death without a dawn, 

And the immortal stars awake again ; 

So is it in the world of living men ; 

A godlike mind soars forth in its delight, 

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 

It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 

Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night. 

Thus ceased she : and the mountain shepherds came 

Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent ; 

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 

Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 

An early but enduring monument, 

Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 

In sorrow ; from her wilds I erne sent 

The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 

And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 

US 



PART III 'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
Adonais A phantom among men, companionless 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm 
Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness ; 
And his own thoughts along that rugged way 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 

A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift, 
A Love in desolation masked, a Power 
Girt round with weakness, it can scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow ; even whilst we speak 
Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may 
break. 

His head was bound with pansies overblown, 

And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 

And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 

Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew 

Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 

Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 

Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 

He came the last, neglected and apart ; 

A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart. 

116 



All stood aloof, and at his partial moan PART III 

Smiled through their tears ; well knew that gentle band Adonais 
Who in another's fate now wept his own, 
As, in the accents of an unknown land, 
He sang new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured : Who art thou ? 
He answered not, but with a sudden hand 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 
Which was like Cain's or Christ's. Oh that it should 
be so ! 

What softer voice is hushed over the dead ? 

Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 

What form leans sadly o'er the white deathbed, 

In mockery of monumental stone, 

The heavy heart heaving without a moan ? 

If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 

Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one, 

Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, 

The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 

Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh ! 
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown 
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 
The nameless worm would now itself disown : 
It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, 
But what was howling in one breast alone, 
Silent with expectation of the song, 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung, 

117 



PART III Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! 
Adonais Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow : 
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee ; 
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now. 

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled 
Far from these carrion kites that scream below ; 
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. 
Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
Through time and change unquenchably the same, 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of 
shame. 

Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep, 

He hath awakened from the dream of life ; 

'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep 

With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 

And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 

Invulnerable nothings. We decay 

Like corpses in a charnel ;^fear and grief 

Convulse us and consume us day by day, 

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 

118 



He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; PART III 

Envy and calumny and hate and pain, Adonais 

And that unrest which men miscall delight, 

Can touch him not and torture not again ; 

From the contagion of the world's slow stain 

He is secure, and now can never mourn 

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; 

Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ! 
Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyless stars which smile on its despair ! 

He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
Which wields the world with never- wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

119 



PART III He is a portion of the loveliness 
Adonais Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there 
All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 

The splendours of the firmament of time 

May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; 

Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 

And death is a low mist which cannot blot 

The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 

Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 

And love and life contend in it for what 

Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 

And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought 

Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 

Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 

And as he fell and as he lived and loved, 

Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 

Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved : 

Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 

120 



And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, PART III 

But whose transmitted effluence cannot die Adonais 

So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 

Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 

Thou art become as one of us, they cry : 

It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 

Swung blind in unascended majesty, 

Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. 

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! 

Who mourns for Adonais ? Oh come forth, 
Fond wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth ; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 
Even to a point within our day and night ; 
And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink 
When hope has kindled hope and lured thee to the 
brink. 

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, 

Oh, not of him, but of our joy : 'tis nought 

That ages, empires, and religions, there 

Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 

For such as he can lend, they borrow not 

Glory from those who made the world their prey ; 

And he is gathered to the kings of thought 

Who waged contention with their time's decay, 

And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

121 



PART III Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
Adonais The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; 

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 

And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress 

The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 
A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
breath. 

Here pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
Its charge to each ; and if the seal is set 
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, 
Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? 

122 



The One remains, the many change and pass ; PART III 

Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; Adonais 

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 

Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 

Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die, 

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 

Follow where all is fled ! Rome's azure sky, 

Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? 

Thy hopes are gone before ; from all things here 

They have departed : thou shouldst now depart ! 

A light is past from the revolving year, 

And man, and woman ; and what still is dear 

Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 

The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near ; 

'Tis Adonais calls ! oh hasten thither, 

No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 

That light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which, through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

123 



PART III The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
Adonais Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 

Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 

Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 

The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; 

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 

The soul of Adonais, like a star, 

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 



124 



PART IV. THE EVERLASTING UNIVERSE 



LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, 

To the whisper of the Apennine, 

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, 

Or like the sea on a northern shore, 

Heard in its raging ebb and flow 

By the captives pent in the cave below. 

The Apennine in the light of day 

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey, 

Which between the earth and sky doth lay ; 

But when night comes, a chaos dread 

On the dim starlight then is spread, 

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. 



126 



THE sleepless hours who watch me as I lie, PART IV 

Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, i. I- 

From the broad moonlight of the sky, 

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, 

Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, 

Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 

IT 

Then I arise, and, climbing Heaven's blue dome, 

I walk over the mountains and the waves, 
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air 
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

Ill 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 

All men who do or even imagine ill 
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 

Good minds and open actions take new might, 

Until diminished by the reign of night. 

IV 

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, 
With their aetherial colours ; the Moon's globe 

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine 

Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

127 



PART IV I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 
i. i. Then with unwilling steps I wander down 

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 

For grief that I depart they weep and frown : 
What look is more delightful than the smile 
With which I soothe them from the western isle ? 

VI 
I am the eye with which the Universe 

Beholds itself and knows it is divine ; 
All harmony of instrument or verse, 

All prophecy, all medicine, is mine, 
All light of art or nature ; to my song 
Victory and praise in its own right belong. 



128 



I 

FROM the forests and highlands PART IV 

We come, we come ; i. 2 

From the river-girt islands, 

Where loud waves are dumb 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 

The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, 
Listening to my^sweet pipings. 



II 

Liquid Peneus was flowing, 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 

The light of the dying day 

Speeded with my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 

And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend and follow, 
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 



129 



Ill 

PART IV I sang of the dancing stars, 

i. 2 I sang of the daedal Earth, 

And of Heaven and the Giant wars, 
And Love, and Death, and Birth ; 
And then I changed my pipings, 
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus 

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed. 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. 
All wept, as I think both ye now would, 
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 



130 



ARETHUSA arose PART IV 

From her couch of snows i. 3 

In the Acroceraunian mountains, 

From cloud and from crag, 

With many a jag, 
Shepherding her bright fountains. 

She leapt down the rocks, 

With her rainbow locks 
Streaming among the streams ; 

Her steps paved with green 

The downward ravine 
Which slopes to the western gleams : 

And gliding and springing 

She went, ever singing, 
In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 

The Earth seemed to love her, 

And Heaven smiled above her, 
As she lingered towards the deep. 

II 

Then Alpheus bold, 

On his glacier cold, 
With his trident the mountain strook, 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks ; with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It unsealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow, 

131 



PART IV And earthquake and thunder 

i. 3 Did rend in sunder 

The bars of the springs below. 
And the beard and the hair 
Of the River-god were 
Seen through the torrent's sweep, 
As he followed the light 
Of the fleet nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep. 

Ill 

Oh save me ! Oh guide me ! 
And bid the deep hide me, 

For he grasps me now by the hair ! 
The loud Ocean heard, 
To its blue depths stirred, 

And divided at her prayer ; 
And under the water 
The Earth's white daughter 

Fled like a sunny beam ; 
Behind her descended 
Her billows, unblended 

With the brackish Dorian stream : 
Like a gloomy stain 
On the emerald main 

Alpheus rushed behind, 
As an eagle pursuing 
A dove to its ruin 

Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 
132 



IV 

Under the bowers PART IV 

Where the Ocean Powers i. 3 

Sit on their pearled thrones ; 

Through the coral woods 

Of the weltering floods, 
Over heaps of unvalued stones ; 

Through the dim beams 

Which amid the streams 
Weave a network of coloured light ; 

And under the caves, 

Where the shadowy waves 
Are as green as the forest's night : 

Outspeeding the shark, 

And the sword-fish dark, 
Under the ocean foam, 

And up through the rifts 

Of the mountain clifts 
They passed to their Dorian home. 



And now from their fountains 

In Enna's mountains, 
Down one vale where the morning basks, 

Like friends once parted 

Grown single-hearted, 
They ply their watery tasks. 

At sunrise they leap 

From their cradles steep 
In the cave of the shelving hill ; 

133 



PART IV At noon- tide they flow 

i. 3 Through the woods below 

And the meadows of Asphodel ; 
And at night they sleep 
In the rocking deep 
Beneath the Ortygian shore ; 
Like spirits that lie 
In the azure sky 
When they love but live no more. 



134 



I 

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, PART IV 

From the seas and the streams ; i. 4 

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under, 
And then again I dissolve it in rain, 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 



II 

I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, 

Lightning my pilot sits, 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 

It struggles and howls at fits : 
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains, 

135 



PART IV Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 
i. 4 The Spirit he loves remains ; 

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile, 
Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 

Ill 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack 

When the morning star shines dead, 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, 

Its ardours of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 

IV 

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
136 



May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, PART IV 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; i. 4 

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 
When I widen the rent in my wind- built tent, 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 

Are each paved with the moon and these. 

V 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 

The mountains its columns be, 
The triumphal arch through which I march 

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair, 

Is the million-coloured bow ; 
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, 

While the moist Earth was laughing below. 

VI 

I am the daughter of earth and water, 
And nursling of the sky ; 

137 



PART IV I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 
i. 4 I change, but I cannot die. 

For after the rain, when with never a stain 

The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams 

Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 

And out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 

I arise and unbuild it again. 



138 



I 

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, PART IV 

Thou from whose immortal bosom, i. 5 

Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, 
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, 

Breathe thine influence most divine 

On thine own child, Proserpine. 

II 

If with mists of evening dew 

Thou dost nourish these young flowers 
Till they grow, in scent and hue, 

Fairest children of the Hours, 
Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 



139 



PART IV 


I 
ECHOES we : listen ! 


ii. I 


We cannot stay : 




As dew-stars glisten 




Then fade away— 




Child of Ocean ! 



II 

Oh follow, follow, 

As our voice recedeth 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
Where the forest spreadeth ; 
{More distant) 
Oh follow, follow ! 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
Where the wild bee never flew, 
Thro' the noontide darkness deep, 
By the odour-breathing sleep 
Of faint night flowers, and the waves 
At the fountain-lighted caves, 
While our music, wild and sweet, 
Mocks thy gently-falling feet, 
Child of Ocean ! 

Ill 

In the world unknown 
Sleeps a voice unspoken ; 

By thy step alone 

Can its rest be broken ; 
Child of Ocean ! 



140 



IV 

Oh f ollow, f ollow ! PART IV 

Thro' the caverns hollow, ii. I 

As the song floats thou pursue, 

By the woodland noontide dew ; 

By the forests, lakes, and fountains, 

Thro' the many-folded mountains ; 

To the rents, and gulphs, and chasms, 

Where the earth reposed from spasms, 

On the day when He and thou 

Parted, to commingle now ; 
Child of Ocean ! 



hi 



PART IV THE path thro' which that lovely twain 
ii. 2 Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew, 

And each dark tree that ever grew, 

Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue ; 
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, 
Can pierce its interwoven bowers, 

Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, 
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, 
Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 

Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers 

Of the green laurel, blown anew ; 
And bends, and then fades silently, 
One frail and fair anemone : 
Or when some star of many a one 
That climbs and wanders thro' steep night, 
Has found the cleft thro' which alone 
Beams fall from high those depths upon 
Ere it is borne away, away, 
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay ; 
It scatters drops of golden light, 
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite : 
And the gloom divine is all around. 
And underneath is the mossy ground. 

II 

There the voluptuous nightingales, 

Are awake thro' all the broad noonday. 
When one with bliss or sadness fails, 
And thro' the windless ivy-boughs, 
142 



Sick with sweet love, droops dying away PART IV 

On its mate's music-panting bosom ; ii. 2 

Another from the swinging blossom, 
Watching to catch the languid close 

Of the last strain, then lifts on high 

The wings of the weak melody, 
'Till some new strain of feeling bear 

The song, and all the woods are mute ; 
When there is heard thro' the dim air 
The rush of wings, and rising there 

Like many a lake-surrounded flute, 
Sounds overflow the listener's brain 
So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 

Ill 

There those enchanted eddies play 

Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, 

By Demogorgon's mighty law, 

With melting rapture, or sweet awe, 
All spirits on that secret way ; 

As inland boats are driven to Ocean 
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw : 
And first there comes a gentle sound 
To those in talk or slumber bound, 

And wakes the destined : soft emotion 
Attracts, impels them : those who saw 

Say from the breathing earth behind 

There steams a plume-uplifting wind 
Which drives them on their path, while they 

H3 



PART IV Believe their own swift wings and feet 

ii. 2 The sweet desires within obey : 

And so they float upon their way, 
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, 
The storm of sound is driven along, 
Sucked up and hurrying : as they fleet, 
Behind its gathering billows meet 
And to the fatal mountain bear 
Like clouds amid the yielding air. 



144 



TO the deep, to the deep, PART IV 

Down, down ! ii. 3 

Through the shade of Sleep, 

Through the cloudy strife 

Of Death and of Life ; 

Through the veil and the bar 

Of things which seem and are, 

Even to the steps of the remotest throne, 
Down, down ! 

While the sound whirls around, 

Down, down ! 
As the fawn draws the hound, 
As the lightning the vapour, 
As a weak moth the taper ; 
Death, Despair ; Love, Sorrow ; 
Time both ; to-day, to-morrow ; 
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 

Down, down ! 

Through the grey, void Abysm, 

Down, down ! 
Where the air is no prism, 
And the moon and stars are not, 
And the cavern crags wear not 
The radiance of Heaven, 
Nor the gloom to Earth given, 
Where there is One pervading, One alone, 

Down, down ! 

H5 



PART IV In the depth of the deep 

ii. 3 Down, down ! 

Like veiled lightning asleep, 
Like the spark nursed in embers, 
The last look Love remembers, 
Like a diamond which shines 
On the dark wealth of mines, 
A spell is treasured but for thee alone. 
Down, down ! 



146 



I 

MY coursers are fed with the lightning, PART IV 

They drink of the whirlwind's stream, ii. 4 

And when the red morning is bright'ning 
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam ; 
They have strength for their swiftness I deem ; 

Then ascend with me, Daughter of Ocean. 

II 

I desire : and their speed makes night kindle ; 

I fear : they outstrip the Typhoon ; 
Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle 

We encircle the earth and the moon : 

We shall rest from long labours at noon : 
Then ascend with me, Daughter of Ocean. 

Ill 

On the brink of the night and the morning 

My coursers are wont to respire ; 
But the Earth has just whispered T a warning 

That their flight must be swifter than fire : 

They shall drink the hot speed of desire ! 
Then ascend with me, Daughter of Ocean. 



H7 



I 

PART IV LIFE of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

ii. 5 With their love the breath between them ; 

And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire, then screen them 
In those looks, where whoso gazes 
Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

II 

Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 

Thro' the vest which seems to hide them ; 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through the clouds ere they divide them ; 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Ill 

Fair are others ; none beholds thee, 
But thy voice sounds low and tender 

Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendour, 

And all feel, yet see thee never, 

As I feel now, lost for ever ! 

IV 

Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! 
148 



I 

MY soul is an enchanted Boat, PART IV 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float ii. 6 

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; 

And thine doth like an angel sit 

Beside the helm conducting it, 
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 

It seems to float ever, for ever, 

Upon that many-winding river, 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A Paradise of wildernesses ! 
Till, like one in slumber bound, 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound : 

II 

Meanwhile thy Spirit lifts its pinions 

In Music's most serene dominions ; 
Catching the winds that fan that happy Heaven. 

And we sail on, away, afar, 

Without a course, without a star, 
But by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 

Till through Elysian garden islets 

By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 

Where never mortal pinnace glided, 

The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is Love, 
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move, 
Harmonising this earth with what we feel above. 

149 



PART IV THE everlasting universe of things 

iii- I Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 
Now dark, now glittering, now reflecting gloom, 
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
The source of human thought its tribute brings 
Of waters, with a sound but half its own, 
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 

II 

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve, dark, deep Ravine, 

Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, 

Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail 

Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams : awful scene, 

Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 

From the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne, 

Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame 

Of lightning through the tempest ; thou dost lie, 

Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 

Children of elder time, in whose devotion 

The chainless winds still come and ever came 

To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging 

To hear, an old and solemn harmony ; 

Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 

Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 

Robes some unsculptured image ; the strange sleep 

150 



Which when the voices of the desert fail PART IV 

Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; Hi- I 

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, 

A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame ; 

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, 

Thou art the path of that unresting sound, 

Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee 

I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 

To muse on my own separate fantasy, 

My own, my human mind, which passively 

Now renders and receives fast influencings, 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear Universe of Things around ; 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 

In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 

Seeking among the shadows that pass by, 

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 

Some phantom, some faint image ; till the breast 

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! 

Ill 

Some say that gleams of a remoter world 
Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, 
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 
Of those who wake and live. I look on high ; 
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 
The veil of life and death ? or do I lie 



PART IV In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 
iii. I Spread far around and inaccessibly 
Its circles ? For the very spirit fails, 
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep 
That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 
Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene. 
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 
Pile around it, ice and rock ; broad vales between 
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 
Blue as the overhanging Heaven, that spread 
And wind among the accumulated steeps ; 
A desert, peopled by the storms alone 
Save when the eagle brings some hunters' bone 
And the wolf tracks her there : how hideously 
Its shapes are heaped around ! rude, bare, and high, 
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. Is this the scene 
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young 
Ruin ? Were these their toys ? or did a sea 
Of fire envelope once this silent snow ? 
None can reply, all seems eternal now. 
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 
So solemn, so serene, that man may be, 
In such a faith, with Nature reconciled. 
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and woe ; not understood 
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good 
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 
152 



IV 

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, PART IV 

Ocean, and all the living things that dwell iii. I 

Within the daedal earth ; lightning, and rain, 
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane ; 
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
Holds every future leaf and flower ; the bound 
With which from that detested trance they leap ; 
The works and ways of man, their death and birth, 
And that of him and all that his may be : 
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound 
Are born and die ; revolve, subside, and swell. 
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, 
Remote, serene, and inaccessible : 
And this, the naked countenance of earth, 
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains, 
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, 
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far foun- 
tains, 
Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice, 
Frost and the Sun, in scorn of mortal power, 
Have piled, dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin 
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky 
Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing 
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 
Branchless and shattered stand ; the rocks, drawn down 

iS3 



PART IV From yon remotest waste, have overthrown 
iii. I The limits of the dead and living world, 

Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ; 
Their food and their retreat for ever gone, 
So much of life and joy is lost. The race 
Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling 
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, 
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, 
Which from their secret chasms in tumult welling 
Meet in the Vale ; and one majestic River, 
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever 
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. 



Mont Blanc yet gleams on high : the Power is there, 
The still and solemn Power of many sights, 
And many sounds, and much of life and death. 
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend 
Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there, 
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, 
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend 
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath 
Rapid and strong, but silently. Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 

iS4 



Over the snow. The secret Strength of Things PART IV 

Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome iii. I 

Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee. 

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 

If to the human mind's imaginings 

Silence and solitude were vacancy ? 



'55 



I 

PART IV MANY a green isle needs must be 

iii. 2 In the deep wide sea of Misery, 

Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round the vessel's track ; 
Whilst, the sunless sky, 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 
And behind, the tempest fleet 
Hurries on with lightning feet, 
Riving sail, and cord, and plank, 
Till the ship has almost drank 
Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; 
And sinks down, down, like that sleep 
When the dreamer seems to be 
Weltering through eternity ; 
And the dim low line, before, 
Of a dark and distant shore 
Still recedes, as ever still 
Longing with divided will, 
But no power to seek or shun, 
He is ever drifted on 
O'er the unreposing wave 
To the haven of the grave. 



i 5 6 



11 

Ay, many flowering islands lie 



In the waters of wide Agony : PART IV 

To such a one this morn was led iii. 2 

My bark, by soft winds piloted : 

'Mid the mountains Euganean 

I stood listening to the paean, 

With which the legioned rocks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical; 

Gathering round with wings all hoar, 

Thro' the dewy mist they soar 

Like grey shades, till the eastern Heaven 

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 

Flecked with fire and azure, lie 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain, 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 

Gleam above the sunlight woods, 

As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 

Thro' the broken mist they sail, 

And the vapours cloven and gleaming 

Follow, down the dark steep streaming, 

Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 

Round the solitary hill. 

fl" Beneath is spread like a green sea 

The waveless plain of Lombardy, 

Bounded by the vaporous air, 

Islanded by cities fair ; 

Underneath Day's azure eyes 

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, 

J 57 



PART IV A peopled labyrinth of walls, 

iii. 2 Amphitrite's destined halls, 

Which her hoary sire now paves 

With his blue and beaming waves. 

Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 

Broad, red, radiant, half reclined 

On the level quivering line 

Of the waters crystalline ; 

And before that chasm of light, 

As within a furnace bright, 

Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 

Shine like obelisks of fire, 

Pointing with inconstant motion 

From the altar of dark ocean 

To the sapphire- tinted skies ; 

As the flames of sacrifice 

From the marble shrines did rise, 

As to pierce the dome of gold 

Where Apollo spoke of old. 

11 Sun-girt City, thou hast been 

Ocean's child, and then his Queen ; 

Now is come a darker day, 

And thou soon must be his prey, 

If the Power that raised thee here 

Hallow so thy watery bier. 

A less drear ruin then than now, 

With thy conquest-branded brow 

Stooping to the slave of slaves 

From thy throne, among the waves, 

i 5 8 



Wilt thou be when the sea-mew PART IV 

Flies, as once before it flew, iii. 2 

O'er thine isles depopulate, 

And all is in its ancient state, 

Save where many a palace gate 

With green sea-flowers overgrown 

Like a rock of ocean's own, 

Topples o'er the abandoned sea 

As the tides change sullenly. 

The fisher on his watery way, 

Wandering at the close of day, 

Will spread his sail and seize his oar 

Till he pass the gloomy shore, 

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 

Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 

Lead a rapid masque of death 

O'er the waters of his path. 

Ill 

Noon descends around me now : 
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, 
When a soft and purple mist 
Like a vaporous amethyst, 
Or an air- dissolved star 
Mingling light and fragrance, far 
From the curved horizon's bound 
To the point of heaven's profound, 
Fills the overflowing sky. 
And the plains that silent lie 

159 



PART IV Underneath, the leaves unsodden 

iii. 2 Where the infant frost has trodden 

With his morning-winged feet, 
Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; 
And the red and golden vines, 
Piercing with their trellised lines 
The rough, dark- skirted wilderness ; 
The dun and bladed grass no less, 
Pointing from this hoary tower 
In the windless air ; the flower 
Glimmering at my feet ; the line 
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 
In the south dimly islanded ; 
And the Alps, whose snows are spread 
High between the clouds and sun ; 
And of living things each one ; 
And my spirit which so long 
Darkened this swift stream of song, 
Interpenetrated lie 
By the glory of the sky : 
Be it love, light, harmony, 
Odour, or the soul of all 
Which from heaven like dew doth fall, 
Or the mind which feeds this verse 
Peopling the lone universe. 

IV 

Noon descends and after noon 
Autumn's evening meets me soon, 
160 



Leading the infantine moon, PART IV 

And that one star, which to her iii. 2 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs : 

And the soft dreams of the morn 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

'Mid remembered agonies, 

The frail bark of this lone being) 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

V 

Other flowering isles must be 

In the sea of Life and Agony : 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulph : even now, perhaps, 

On some rock the wild wave wraps, 

With folded wings they waiting sit 

For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove, 

Where for me, and those I love, 

May a windless bower be built, 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 

In a dell 'mid lawny hills, 

Which the wild sea- murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

161 



PART IV Of old forests echoing round, 

iii. 2 And the light and smell divine 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine. 

We may live so happy there, 

That the Spirits of the Air, 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude ; 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the winds whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 

Under which the bright sea heaves ; 

While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies ; 

And the love, which heals all strife, 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood : 

They, not it would change ; and soon 

Every sprite beneath the moon 

Would repent its envy vain, 

And the earth grow young again. 



162 



HAIL to thee, blithe spirit ! PART IV 

Bird thou never wert, iii. 3 

That from Heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher and still higher, 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire ; 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run ; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of Heaven, 

In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 

Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear, 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

163 



PART IV All the earth and air 

iii. 3 With thy voice is loud, 

As, when night is bare, 

From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is over- 
flowed. 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow-clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see, 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody : 

Like a Poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace-tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 

Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the 

view : 
164 



Like a rose embowered PART IV 

In its own green leaves, iii. 3 

By warm winds deflowered 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
thieves. 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain- awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, Sprite or Bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 

Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus hymeneal, 

Or triumphal chaunt, 
Matched with thine would be all 

But an empty vaunt, 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 

What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 

165 



PART IV With thy clear keen joyance 

iii. 3 Languor cannot be : 

Shadow of annoyance 

Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 

Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear, 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 

Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 
166 



Teach me half the gladness PART IV 

That thy brain must know, iii. 3 

Such harmonious madness 

From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 



167 



PART IV O WILD west wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 
iii. 4 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O thou 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odours plain and hill : 
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, Oh hear ! 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 

Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed, 

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 

On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying Year, to which this closing night 

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 

Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : Oh hear ! 

168 



Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams PART IV 

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, iii. 4 

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice-isle in Baiae's bay, 

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 

Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 

The sapless foliage of the ocean know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, 

And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh hear ! 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 
The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have striven 
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud. 

169 



PART IV Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
Hi. 4 What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! 
And, by the incantation of this verse, 
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth 
The trumpet of a prophecy ! O wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 



170 



PART V. MAN EMANCIPATE 



TO suffer woes which hope thinks infinite ; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent ; 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 



172 



SO now my summer task is ended, Mary, PART V 

And I return to thee, mine own heart's home ; i. I 
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery, 

Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome ; 

Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame become 
A star among the stars of mortal night, 

If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, 
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite 
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. 

The toil which stole from thee so many an hour 

Is ended — and the fruit is at thy feet ! 
No longer where the woods to frame a bower 

With interlaced branches mix and meet, 

Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, 
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green 

Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen : 
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, 

when first 
The clouds which wrap this world from youth 

did pass. 
I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep : a fresh May- dawn it was, 
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, 
And wept, I knew not why : until there rose 

From the near schoolroom voices that, alas ! 

173 



PART V Were but one echo from a world of woes — - 
i. I The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

And then I clasped my hands, and looked around, 
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 

Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground. 
So, without shame, I spake : I will be wise, 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 

Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise 

Without reproach or check. I then controlled 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, 

Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret store 
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 

It might walk forth to war among mankind ; 

Thus power and hope were strengthened more 
and more 

Within me, till there came upon my mind 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 

Alas that love should be a blight and snare 
To those who seek all sympathies in one ! 

Such once I sought in vain ; then black despair, 
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
Over the world in which I moved alone : 

174 



Yet never found I one not false to me, PART V 

Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone i. I 

Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be 
Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 

Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart 
Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain, 

How beautiful and calm and free thou wert 
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, 

And walked as free as light the clouds among, 
Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain 

From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung 
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long ! 

No more alone through the world's wilderness, 

Although I trod the paths of high intent, 
I journeyed now ; no more companionless, 

Where solitude is like despair, I went. 

There is the wisdom of a stern content 
When Poverty can blight the just and good, 

When Infamy dares mock the innocent, 
And cherished friends turn with the multitude 
To trample : this was ours, and we unshaken stood ! 

Now has descended a serener hour, 

And, with inconstant fortune, friends return ; 

Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power 
Which says : Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. 

175 



PART V And from thy side two gentle babes are born 
i. I To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we 

Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn : 
And these delights, and thou, have been to me 
The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. 

Is it that now my inexperienced fingers 
But strike the prelude of a loftier strain ? 

Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers 
Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again, 
Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, 

And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway, 
Holier than was Amphion's ? I would fain 

Reply in hope — but I am worn away, 
And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey. 

And what art thou ? I know, but dare not speak : 
Time may interpret to his silent years. 

Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, 
And in the light thine ample forehead wears, 
And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, 

And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 

Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears : 

And, through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see 
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, 

Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child. 
I wonder not — for One then left this earth 
176 



Whose life was like a setting planet mild, PART V 

Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled i. I 

Of its departing glory ; still her fame 

Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild 

Which shake these latter days ; and thou canst claim 
The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. 

One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit 

Which was the echo of three thousand years ; 
And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, 

As some lone man who in a desert hears 

The music of his home : unwonted fears 
Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, 

And Faith and Custom and low-thoughted cares, 
Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space 
Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling- 
place. 

Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind ! 

If there must be no response to my cry, 
If men must rise and stamp, with fury blind, 
On his pure name who loves them, thou and I, 
Sweet Friend ! can look from our tranquillity 
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night, 

Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by 
Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's 
sight, 
That burn from year to year with unextinguished 
light. 
m 177 



PART V WHEN the last hope of trampled France had 
i. 2 failed 

Like a brief dream of unremaining glory, 
From visions of despair I rose, and scaled 
The peak of an aeriel promontory, 
Whose caverned base with the vext surge was 
hoary ; 
And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken 

Each cloud and every wave : — but transitory 
The calm : for sudden the firm earth was shaken, 
As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken. 

So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder 
Burst in far peals along the waveless deep, 

When, gathering fast, around, above, and under, 
Long trails of tremulous mist began to creep, 
Until their complicating lines did steep 

The orient sun in shadow : — not a sound 
Was heard ; one horrible repose did keep 

The forests and the floods, and all around 
Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the 
ground. 

Hark ! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps 

Earth and the ocean. See ! the lightnings yawn 
Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps 
Glitter and boil beneath : it rages on, 
One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves up- 
thrown, 
i 7 8 



Lightning and hail and darkness eddying by. PART V 

There is a pause — the sea-birds, that were gone i. 2 

Into their caves to shriek, come forth to spy, 
What calm has fallen on earth, what light is in the sky. 

For, where the irresistible storm had cloven 

That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen 
Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven 

Most delicately, and the ocean green, 

Beneath that opening spot of blue serene, 
Quivered like burning emerald : calm was spread 

On all below ; but far on high, between 
Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled, 
Countless and swift as leaves on Autumn's tempest shed. 

For ever, as the war became more fierce 

Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high, 
That spot grew more serene ; blue light did pierce 

The woof of those white clouds, which seemed to 
lie 

Far, deep, and motionless ; while through the sky 
The pallid semicircle of the moon 

Passed on, in slow and moving majesty ; 
Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon 
But slowly fled ; like dew beneath the beams of noon. 

I could not choose but gaze ; a fascination 

Dwelt in that moon and sky and clouds, which 
drew 

179 



PART V My fancy thither, and in expectation 

i. 2 Of what, I knew not, I remained : the hue 

Of the white moon, amid that Heaven so blue, 
Suddenly stained with shadow did appear ; 

A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew, 
Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere 
Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear. 

Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains, 

Dark, vast, and overhanging, on a river 
Which there collects the strength of all its fountains, 
Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth 

quiver, 
Sails, oars, and stream, tending to one endeavour ; 
So, from that chasm of light a winged Form, 

On all the winds of Heaven approaching ever, 
Floated, dilating as it came : the storm 
Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and 
warm. 

A course precipitous, of dizzy speed, 

Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight! 

For in the air do I behold indeed 
An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight : 
And now, relaxing its impetuous flight 

Before the aerial rock on which I stood, 

The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, 

And hung with lingering wings over the flood, 
And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude. 
180 



A shaft of light upon its wings descended, PART V 

And every golden feather gleamed therein, i. 2 

Feather and scale inextricably blended. 
The Serpent's mailed and many-coloured skin 
Shone through the plumes its coils were twined 
within 

By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high 
And far the neck, receding lithe and thin, 

Sustained a crested head, which warily 
Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's steadfast eye. 

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling 

With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle 
sailed 
Incessantly — sometimes on high concealing 
Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed, 
Drooped through the air ; and still it shrieked 
and wailed, 
And, casting back its eager head, with beak 

And talon unremittingly assailed 
The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek 
Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak. 

What life, what power, was kindled and arose 

Within the sphere of that appalling fray ! 
For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes, 

A vapour like the sea's suspended spray 

Hung gathered : in the void air, far away, 
Floated the shattered plumes : bright scales did leap, 

181 



PART V Where'er the Eagle's talons made their way, 
i. 2 Like sparks into the darkness ; — as they sweep, 

Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep. 

Swift chances in that combat — many a check, 
And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil ; 

Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck 
Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, 
Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil, 

Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea 
Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil 

His adversary, who then reared on high 
His red and burning crest, radiant with victory. 

Then on the white edge of the bursting surge, 
Where they had sunk together, would the Snake 

Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge 

The wind with his wild writhings ; for, to break 
That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake 

The strength of his unconquerable wings 
As in despair, and with his sinewy neck 

Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings, 
Then soar — as swift as smoke from a volcano springs. 

Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength, 
Thus long, but unprevailing : — the event 

Of that portentous fight appeared at length : 
Until the lamp of day was almost spent 
It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, 
182 



Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last PART V 

Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, i. 2 

With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle past, 
Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast. 



183 



PART V WORLDS on worlds are rolling ever 
ii. i From creation to decay, 

Like the bubbles on a river 

Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 
But they are still immortal 
Who, through birth's orient portal 
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 
Clothe their unceasing flight 
In the brief dust and light 
Gathered around their chariots as they go ; 
New shapes they still may weave, 
New gods, new laws receive, 
Bright or dim are they as the robes they last 
On Death's bare ribs had cast. 

A power from the unknown God, 

A Promethean conqueror came ; 
Like a triumphal path he trod 

The thorns of death and shame. 

A mortal shape to him 

Was like the vapour dim 
Which the orient planet animates with light ; 

Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, 

Like bloodhounds mild and tame, 
Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight ; 

The moon of Mahomet 

Arose, and it shall set : 
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon 

The cross leads generations on. 
184 



Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep PART V 

From one whose dreams are Paradise ii. I 

Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 

And day peers forth with her blank eyes ; 

So fleet, so faint, so fair, 

The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem : 

Apollo, Pan, and Love, 

And even Olympian Jove 
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them ; 

Our hills and seas and streams 

Dispeopled of their dreams, 
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, 

Wailed for the golden years. 



185 



PARTV A GLORIOUS people vibrated again. 
ii. 2 The lightning of the nations, Liberty, 

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 

Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 
And in the rapid plumes of song 
Clothed itself, sublime and strong — 
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among — 
Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey ; 

Till from its station in the Heaven of Fame 
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray 
Of the remotest sphere of living flame 
Which paves the void was from behind it flung, 
As foam from a ship's swiftness ; when there came 
A voice out of the deep. I will record the same. 

II 

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth : 
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled 
Into the depths of Heaven. The daedal Earth, 

That island in the ocean of the world, 
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air : 
But this divinest universe 
Was yet a chaos and a curse, 
For thou wert not : but, Power from worst producing 
worse, 
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, 
And of the birds, and of the watery forms, 
1 86 



And there was war among them, and despair PART V 

Within them, raging without truce or terms : ii. 2 

The bosom of their violated nurse 

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms 

on worms, 
And I men on men ; each heart was as a hell of storms. 



Ill 

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 

His generations under the pavilion 
Of the Sun's throne : palace and pyramid, 

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million 
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. 
This human living multitude 
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, 
For thou wert not ; but o'er the populous solitude, 
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, 

Hung Tyranny ; beneath, sate deified 
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves ; 
Into the shadow of her pinions wide, 
Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, 
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, 
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. 



IV 

The nodding promontories, and blue isles, 

And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves 

i8 7 



PARTV Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles 

ii. 2 Of favouring Heaven : from their enchanted caves 

Prophetic echoes flung dim melody 
On the unapprehensive wild. 
The vine, the corn, the olive mild, 
Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled ; 
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, 

Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, 
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein 
Of Parian stone ; and, yet a speechless child, 
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain 
Her lidless eyes for thee ; when, o'er the Aegean 
main, 



Athens arose : a city such as vision 

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 

Of kingliest masonry ; the ocean-floors 
Pave it, the evening sky pavilions it, 
Its portals are inhabited 
By thunder-zoned winds, each head 
Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded ; 
A divine work ! Athens, diviner yet, 

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set ; 
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill 
188 



Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead PART V 

In marble immortality, that hill, ii. 2 

Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. 



VI 

Within the surface of Time's fleeting river 

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay, 
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever 

It trembles, but it cannot pass away ! 
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder 
With an earth- awakening blast 
Through the caverns of the past ; 
Religion veils her eyes ; Oppression shrinks aghast : 
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, 
Which soars where expectation never flew, 
Rending the veil of space and time asunder ! 
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew ; 
One sun illumines Heaven ; one Spirit vast 
With life and love makes chaos ever new, 
As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. 



VII 

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, 
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Maenad, 

She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest 
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned ; 

And many a deed of terrible uprightness 

189 



PART V By thy sweet love was sanctified ; 

ii. 2 And in thy smile, and by thy side, 

Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died. 

But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness, 

And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, 
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, 
The senate of the tyrants : they sunk prone, 
Slaves of one tyrant : Palatinus sighed 
Faint echoes of Ionian song ; that tone 
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. 



VIII 

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, 
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, 
Or utmost islet inaccessible, 

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, 
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, 
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, 
To talk in echoes sad and stern, 
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn ? 
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks 

Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. 
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks 
Were quickly dried ! for thou didst groan, not 
weep, 
When from its sea of death, to kill and burn, 
The Galilean serpent forth did creep, 
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. 
190 



IX 

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou ? PART V 

And then the shadow of thy coming fell ii. 2 

On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow : 

And many a warrior-peopled citadel, 
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 
Arose in sacred Italy, 
Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea 
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned 
majesty; 
The multitudinous anarchy did sweep, 

And burst around their walls, like idle foam, 
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep 
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb 
Dissonant arms ; and Art, which cannot die, 
With divine wand traced on our earthly home 
Fit imagery to pave Heaven's everlasting dome. 



X 

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon ! thou terror 

Of the world's wolves ! thou bearer of the quiver, 
Whose sunlike shafts pierce temp est- winged Error, 
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 
In the calm regions of the orient Day ! 

Luther caught thy wakening glance ; 
Like lightning, from his leaden lance 
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance 
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay : 

And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen 

191 



PART V In songs whose music cannot pass away, 

ii. 2 Though it must flow for ever : not unseen 

Before the spirit-sighted countenance 

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene 
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. 

XI 

The eager Hours and unreluctant Years, 

As on a dawn-illumined mountain, stood, 
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, 

Darkening each other with their multitude, 
And cried aloud, Liberty ! Indignation 
Answered Pity from her cave ; 
Death grew pale within the grave, 
And Desolation howled to the Destroyer, Save ! 
When like Heaven's sun, girt by the exhalation 

Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, 
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation 
Like shadows : as if day had cloven the skies 
At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, 
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, 
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 



XII 

Thou Heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee 
then, 
In ominous eclipse ? A thousand years, 
192 



Bred from the slime of deep Oppression's den, PART V 

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, ii. 2 

Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away ; 
How like Bacchanals of blood 
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood 
Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred 
brood ! 
When one, like them, but mightier far than they, 
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, 
Rose : armies mingled in obscure array, 

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred 
bowers 
Of serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued, 
Rests with those dead but unforgotten Hours 
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral 
towers. 

XIII 

England yet sleeps : was she not called of old ? 

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder 
Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold 

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder : 
O'er the lit waves every Aeolian isle 
From Pithecusa to Pelorus 
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus : 
They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of Heaven suspended o'er 
us. 
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile 
And they dissolve ; but Spain's were links of steel, 

N 193 



PART V Till bit to dust by Virtue's keenest file, 
ii. 2 Twins of a single destiny ! appeal 

To the eternal Years enthroned before us 
In the dim West : Impress us, from a seal, 
All ye have thought and done ! Time cannot dare 
conceal. 



XIV 

Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead, 

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, 
His soul may stream over the tyrant's head : 

Thy victory shall be his epitaph, 
Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, 
King-deluded Germany ; 
His dead spirit lives in thee. 
Why do we fear or hope ? thou art already free ! 
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine 

And glorious world ! thou flowery wilderness ! 
Thou island of Eternity ! thou shrine 

Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness, 
Worships the thing thou wert ! O Italy, 
Gather thy blood into thy heart ; repress 
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. 



XV 

Oh that the free would stamp the impious name 

Of KING into the dust ! or write it there, 
194 



So that this blot upon the page of fame PART V 

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air ii. 2 

Erases, and the flat sands close behind ! 
Ye the oracle have heard : 
Lift the victory-flashing sword, 
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, 
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind 

Into a mass, irrefragably firm, 
The axes and the rods which awe mankind ; 
The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm 
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred ; 
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, 
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. 



XVI 

Oh that the wise from their bright minds would kindle 

Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, 
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and 
dwindle 
Into the hell from which it first was hurled, 
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure ; 

Till human thoughts might kneel alone 
Each before the judgement-throne 
Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown ! 
Oh that the words which make the thoughts obscure 
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering 
dew 
From a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture, 

*9S 



PART V Were stript of their thin masks and various hue 

ii. 2 And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own, 
Till in the nakedness of false and true 
They stood before their Lord, each to receive its 
due ! 

XVII 

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever 
Can be between the cradle and the grave, 
Crowned him the King of Life. Oh vain endeavour ! 

If on his own high will, a willing slave, 
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. 
What if earth can clothe and feed 
Amplest millions at their need, 
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed ! 
Oh what if Art, an ardent intercessor, 

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, 
And cries : Give me, thy child, dominion 
Over all height and depth ! if Life can breed 

New wants, and Wealth, from thosewhotoil andgroan, 
Rend, of thy gifts and hers, a thousandfold for one. 

XVIII 

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave 
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning star 

Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave, 
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car 

196 



Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame ; PART V 

Comes she not, and come ye not, ii. 2 

Rulers of eternal thought, 
To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill- apportioned lot ? 
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame 

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be ? 
O Liberty ! if such could be thy name 

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee : 
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought 
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free 
Wept tears, and blood like tears ? The solemn 
harmony 

XIX 

Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing 

To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn. 
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging 
Its path athwart the thunder- smoke of dawn, 
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light 
On the heavy sounding plain, 
When the bolt has pierced its brain ; 
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain ; 
As a far taper fades with fading night, 
As a brief insect dies with dying day, 
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 
Drooped ; o'er it closed the echoes far away 
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, 
As waves which lately paved his watery way 
Hiss round a drown er's head in their tempestuous play. 

197 



PART V THE fiery mountains answer each other ; 

ii. 3 Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone ; 

The tempestuous oceans awake one another, 

And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne, 
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. 

II 

From a single cloud the lightning flashes, 
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around, 

Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, 

An hundred are shuddering and tottering ; the sound 
Is bellowing underground. 

Ill 

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, 
And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp ; 

Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean ; thy stare 
Makes blind the volcanoes ; the sun's bright lamp 
To thine is a fen-fire damp. 

IV 

From billow and mountain and exhalation 

The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast ; 

From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, 
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast, 

And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night 
In the van of the morning light. 



198 



I 

THE world's great age begins anew, PART V 

The golden years return, ii. 4 

The earth doth like a snake renew 
Her winter weeds outworn : 

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam 

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 

II 

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 

From waves serener far ; 
A new Peneus rolls his fountains 

Against the morning star. 
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
Young Cvclads on a sunnier deep. 

Ill 

A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 

Fraught with a later prize ; 
Another Orpheus sings again, 

And loves, and weeps and dies. 
A new Ulysses leaves once more 
Calypso for his native shore. 

IV 

Oh write no more the tale of Troy, 

If earth Death's scroll must be ! 
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 

Which dawns upon the free : 
Although a subtler Sphinx renew 
Riddles _of death Thebes never knew. 

199 



V 

PART V Another Athens shall arise 

ii. 4 And to remoter time 

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 

The splendour of its prime ; 
And leave, if nought so bright may live, 
All earth can take or Heaven can give. 

VI 

Saturn and Love their long repose 
Shall burst, more bright and good 

Than all who fell, than One who rose, 
Than many unsubdued : 

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, 

But votive tears and symbol flowers. 

VII 

Oh cease ! must hate and death return ? 

Cease ! must men kill and die ? 
Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 

Of bitter prophecy. 
The world is weary of the past, 
Oh might it die or rest at last ! 



200 



THE pale stars are gone ! PART V 

For the Sun, their swift shepherd, iii. I 

To their folds them compelling, 
In the depths of the dawn, 
Hastes, in meteor- eclipsing array, and they flee 
Beyond his blue dwelling, 
As fawns flee the leopard. 
But where are ye ? 



201 



PART V HERE, Oh here: 

iii. 2 We bear the bier 

Of the Father of many a cancelled year ! 
Spectres we 
Of the dead Hours be, 
We bear Time to his tomb in Eternity. 

Strew, Oh strew 

Hair, not yew ! 
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew ! 

Be the faded flowers 

Of Death's bare bowers 
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours ! 

II 

Haste, Oh haste ! 

As shades are chased, 
Trembling, by Day, from Heaven's blue waste, 

We melt away, 

Like dissolving spray, 
From the children of a diviner day, 

With the lullaby 

Of winds that die 
On the bosom of their own harmony ! 



202 



I 

BRIGHT clouds float in Heaven, PART V 

Dew-stars gleam on Earth, iii. 3 

Waves assemble on Ocean, 
They are gathered and driven 
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee ! 
They shake with emotion, 
They dance in their mirth. 
But where are ye ? 

II 

The pine-boughs are singing 
Old songs with new gladness, 
The billows and fountains 
Fresh music are flinging, 
Like the notes of a spirit, from land and from sea ; 
The storms mock the mountains 
With the thunder of gladness. 
But where are ye ? 



203 



PART V Semichorus I of Hours 

U1 * 4 THE voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth 

Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep 
Which covered our being and darkened our birth 
In the deep. 

A Voice 

In the deep ? 

Semichorus II 

Oh, below the deep. 

Semichorus I 

An hundred ages we had been kept 
Cradled in visions of hate and care, 

And each one who waked as his brother slept, 
Found the truth 

Semichorus II 

Worse than his visions were ! 

Semichorus I 

We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep ; 

We have known the voice of Love in dreams, 
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap ■ 



Semichorus II 
As the billows leap in the morning beams ! 



204 



Chorus of Hours PART V 

WEAVE the dance on the floor of the breeze, * •> 

Pierce with song Heaven's silent light, 
Enchant the Day that too swiftly flees, 

To check its flight ere the cave of Night. 



Once the hungry Hours were hounds 

Which chased the Day like a bleeding deer, 

And it limped and stumbled with many wounds 
Through the nightly dells of the desert year. 



But now, oh weave the mystic measure 
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, 

Let the Hours, and the Spirits of might and pleasure, 
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. 



Unite ! 



A Voice 

Chorus of Spirits 

We join the throng 

Of the dance and the song, 
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along ; 

As the flying-fish leap 

From the Indian deep, 
And mix with the sea-birds, half- asleep. 

205 



PART V Chorus of Hours 

" Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, 

For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 
And your wings are soft and swift as thought, 
And your eyes are as Love which is veiled not ? 

Chorus of Spirits 

We come from the mind 

Of human kind 
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind, 

Now 'tis an Ocean 

Of clear emotion, 
A Heaven of serene and mighty motion 

From that deep Abyss 

Of wonder and bliss, 
Whose caverns are crystal palaces ; 

From those skiey towers 

Where Thought's crowned Powers 
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours ! 

From the dim recesses 

Of woven caresses, 
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses ; 

From the azure isles, 

Where sweet Wisdom smiles, 
Delaying your ships with her syren wiles. 
206 



From the temples high PART V 

Of Man's ear and eye, iii. 5 

Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy ; 

From the murmurings 

Of the unsealed springs 
Where Science bedews his daedal wings. 

Years after years, 

Through blood, and tears, 
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears ; 

We waded and flew, 

And the islets were few 
Where the bud- blighted flowers of happiness grew. 

Our feet now, every palm, 

Are sandalled with calm, 
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm ; 

And, beyond our eyes, 

The human love lies 
Which makes all it gazes on, Paradise. 

Chorus of Spirits and Hours 

Then weave the web of the mystic measure ; 
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, 

Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure, 
Fill the dance and the music of mirth, 

As the waves of a thousand streams rush by 

To an Ocean of splendour and harmony ! 

207 



PART V Chorus of Sprits 

Uur spoil is won, 

Our task is done, 
We are free to dive, or soar, or run ; 

Beyond and around, 

Or within the bound 
Which clips the world with darkness round. 

We'll pass the eyes 

Of the starry skies 
Into the hoar deep to colonise : 

Death, Chaos, and Night, 

From the sound of our flight, 
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might. 

And Earth, Air, and Light, 
And the Spirit of Might, 

Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight ; 
And Love, Thought, and Breath, 
The powers that quell Death, 

Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. 

And our singing shall build 

In the void's loose field 
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield ; 

We will take our plan 

From the new world of man, 
And our work shall be called the Promethean. 
208 



Chorus of Hours 

Break the dance, and scatter the song ; 
Let some depart, and some remain. 

Semichorus I 
We, beyond Heaven, are driven along : 

Semichorus II 
Us the enchantments of Earth retain : 

Semichorus I 

Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, 

With the Spirits which build a new Earth and Sea, 

And a Heaven where yet Heaven could never be. 

Semichorus II 

Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, 
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night, 
With the Powers of a world of perfect light. 



PART V 
iii. 5 



Semichorus I 

We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere, 
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear 
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear. 

o 209 



PART V SethicborwH 

in. 5 w e encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, 
And the happy forms of its death and birth 
Change to the music of our sweet mirth. 

Chorus of Hours and Spirits 

Break the dance, and scatter the song, 

Let some depart and some remain, 
Wherever we fly we lead along 
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong, 
The clouds that are heavy with Love's sweet rain. 



2IO 



The Earth PART V 

THE joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness ! m ' 

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, 
The vaporous exultation not to be confined ! 

Ha ! ha ! the animation of delight 

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, 
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. 

The Moon 

Brother mine, calm wanderer, 

Happy globe of land and air, 
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, 

Which penetrates my frozen frame, 

And passes with the warmth of flame, 
With love, and odour, and deep melody 
Through me, through me ! 

The Earth 

Ha ! ha ! the caverns of my hollow mountains, 

My cloven fire-crags, sound- exulting fountains 
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. 

The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, 

And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses, 
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after. 

The Moon 

The snow upon my lifeless mountains 
Is loosened into living fountains, 

211 



PART V My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine : 
iii. 6 A spirit from my heart bursts forth, 

It clothes with unexpected birth 
My cold bare bosom : Oh ! it must be thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

Gazing on thee I feel, I know 

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, 
And living shapes upon my bosom move : 

Music is in the sea and air, 

Winged clouds soar here and there, 
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of : 
'Tis Love, all Love ! 

The shadow of white Death has past 

From my path in Heaven at last, 
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep ; 

And through my newly-woven bowers, 

Wander happy paramours, 
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep 
Thy vales more deep. 

The Earth 

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold 
A half unfrozen dew- globe, green, and gold, 

And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, 
And wanders up the vault of the blue day, 
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray 

Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst. 

212 



The Moon PART V 

Thou art folded, thou art lying U1 * " 

In the light which is undying 
Of thine own joy, and Heaven's smile divine ; 
All suns and constellations shower 
On thee a light, a life, a power 
Which doth array thy sphere ; thou pourest thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

The Earth 
I spin beneath my pyramid of night, 
Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight, 
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep ; 
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, 
Under the shadow of his beauty lying, 
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth 
keep. 

The Moon 

As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, 
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull ; 

So, when thy shadow falls on me, 

Then am I mute and still, by thee 
Covered ; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, 
Full, Oh, too full ! 

Thou art speeding round the sun 
Brightest world of many a one ; 

213 



PART V Green and azure sphere which shinest 

iii. 6 With a light which is divinest 

Among all the lamps of Heaven 
To whom life and light is given ; 
I, thy crystal paramour 
Borne beside thee by a power 
Like the polar Paradise, 
Magnet-like, of lovers' eyes ; 
I, a most enamoured maiden 
Whose weak brain is overladen 
With the pleasure of her love, 
Maniac-like around thee move 
Gazing, an insatiate bride, 
On thy form from every side 
Like a Maenad, round the cup 
Which Agave lifted up 
In the weird Cadmaean forest. 

Brother, wheresoe'er thou soar est 
I must hurry, whirl and follow, 
Through the Heavens wide and hollow, 
Sheltered, by the warm embrace 
Of thy soul, from hungry space, 
Drinking, from thy sense and sight, 
Beauty, majesty, and might ; 
As a lover or chameleon 
Grows like what it looks upon, 
As a violet's gentle eye 
Gazes on the azure sky 
214 



Until its hue grows like what it beholds ; PART V 

As a gray and watery mist inV 6 

Glows like solid amethyst 

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, 
When the sunset sleeps 
Upon its snow. 

The Earth 

And the weak day weeps 
That it should be so. 
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light 
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night, 

Through isles for ever calm ; 
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce 
The caverns of my pride's deep universe, 
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce 

Made wounds which need thy balm. 



215 



PART V Demogorgon 

THOU, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, 
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, 

Beautiful orb ! gathering as thou dost roll 
The Love which paves thy path along the skies : 

The Earth 
I hear : I am as a drop of dew that dies. 

Demogorgon 

Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth 
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee ; 

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth 
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony : 

The Moon 
I hear : I am a leaf shaken by thee ! 

Demogorgon 

Ye Kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods, 
Aetherial Dominations, who possess 

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes 

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness : 

A Voice from above 

Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless. 
216 



Demogorgon PART V 

Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse lv * 

Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray, 
Whether your nature is that Universe 

Which once ye saw and suffered 

A Voice from beneath 

Or as they 
Whom we have left, we change and pass away. 

Demogorgon 

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes 

From man's high mind even to the central stone 

Of sullen lead ; from Heaven's star-fretted domes 
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on : 

A confused Voice 
We hear : thy words waken Oblivion. 

Demogorgon 

Spirits, whose homes are flesh : ye beasts and birds, 
Ye worms, and fish ; ye living leaves and buds ; 

Lightning and wind ; and ye untameable herds, 
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes : 

A Voice 

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. 

217 



PART V Demogorgon 



IV. 



Man, who wert once a despot and a slave ; 

A dupe and a deceiver ; a decay ; 
A traveller from the cradle to the grave 

Through the dim night of this immortal day : 

All 
Speak : thy strong words may never pass away. 

Demogorgon 

This is the Day, which down the void Abysm 

At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, 

And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep : 
Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 
And folds over the world its healing wings. 

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, 
These are the seals of that most firm assurance 

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength ; 
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
Mother of many acts and hours, should free 

The serpent that would clasp her with his length ; 
These are the spells by which to reassume 
An empire o'er the disentangled Doom. 
218 



To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite ; PART V 

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; iv. 

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From his own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent ; 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free ; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 



219 



EPILOGUE : EPIPSYCHIDION 



EPI- MY Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few 

LOGUE Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, 

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; 

Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring 

Thee to base company (as chance may do), 

Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, 

I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again, 

My last delight ! tell them that they are dull, 

And bid them own that thou art beautiful. 



222 



SWEET Spirit ! Sister of that orphan one, EPI- 

Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, LOGUE 

In my heart's temple I suspend to thee 
These votive wreaths of withered memory. 

K Poor captive bird ! who, from thy narrow cage, 
Pourest such music, that it might assuage 
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, 
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody ; 
This song shall be thy rose : its petals pale 
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale ! 
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, 
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. 

^f High, spirit- winged Heart ! who dost for ever 

Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, 

Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed 

It over-soared this low and worldly shade, 

Lie shattered ; and thy panting, wounded breast 

Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest ! 

I weep vain tears . blood would less bitter be, 

Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. 

^f Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, 
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman 
All that is insupportable in thee 
Of light, and love, and immortality ! 
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! 
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe ! 

223 



EPI- Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living Form 
LOGUE Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the Storm ! 
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror ! 
Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror 
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, 
All shapes look glorious which thou gazes t on ! 

^[ Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now 
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow; 
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song 
All of its much mortality and wrong, 
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew 
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, 
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy : 
Then smile on it, so that it may not die. 

^f I never thought before my death to see 

Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, 

I love thee ; though the world by no thin name 

Will hide that love from its unvalued shame. 

Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! 

Or, that the name my heart lent to another 

Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, 

Blending two beams of one eternity ! 

Yet were one lawful and the other true, 

These names, though dear, could paint not, as is 

due, 
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! 
I am not thine : I am a part of thee. 
224 



Tf Sweet Lamp ! my moth-like Muse has burnt its EPI- 

wings ; LOGUE 

Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, 
Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, 
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, 
A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless ? 
A well of sealed and secret happiness, 
Whose waters like blithe light and music are, 
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? A Star 
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone ? 
A smile amid dark frowns ? a gentle tone 
Amid rude voices ? a beloved light ? 
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight ? 
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play 
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day 
And lull fond grief asleep ? a buried treasure ? 
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ; 
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe ? — I measure 
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, 
And find — alas ! mine own infirmity. 

^| She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, 
And lured me towards sweet Death ; as Night by Day, 
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, 
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, 
In the suspended impulse of its lightness, 
Were less aetherially light : the brightness 
Of her divinest presence trembles through 
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 

p 225 



EPI- Embodied in the windless Heaven of June 
LOGUE Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon 
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful : 
And from her lips,* as from a hyacinth full 
Of honey- dew, a liquid murmur drops, 
Killing the sense with passion ; sweet as stops 
Of planetary music heard in trance. 
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, 
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap 
Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep 
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 
The glory of her being, issuing thence, 
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade 
Of unentangled intermixture, made 
By Love, of light and motion : one intense 
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, 
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing, 
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing 
With the unintermitted blood, which there 
Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air 
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver), 
Continuously prolonged, and ending never, 
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled 
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world ; 
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. 
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress 
And her loose hair ; and where some heavy tress 
The air of her own speed has disentwined, 
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind ; 
226 



And in the soul a wild odour is felt, EPI- 

Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt LOGUE 

Into the bosom of a frozen bud. 

See where she stands ! a mortal shape indued 

With love and life and light and deity, 

And motion which may change but cannot die ; 

An image of some bright Eternity ; 

A shadow of some golden dream ; a Splendour 

Leaving the third sphere pilotless ; a tender 

Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love 

Under whose motions life's dull billows move ; 

A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning ; 

A Vision like incarnate April, warning, 

With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy 

Into his summer grave, ^f Ah, woe is me ! 

What have I dared ? where am I lifted ? how 

Shall I descend and perish not ? I know 

That Love makes all things equal : I have heard 

By mine own heart this joyous truth averred : 

The spirit of the worm beneath the sod 

In love and worship blends itself with God. 

Spouse ! Sister ! Angel ! Pilot of the Fate 
Whose course has been so starless ! Oh, too late 
Beloved ! Oh, too soon adored, by me ! 
For in the fields of immortality 
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, 
A divine presence in a place divine ; 
Or should have moved beside it on this earth, 

227 



EPI- A shadow of that substance, from its birth ; 
LOGUE But not as now : — I love thee ; yes, I feel 
That on the fountain of my heart a seal 
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright 
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. 
We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, 
For one another, though dissimilar ; 
Such difference without discord, as can make 
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake 
As trembling leaves in a continuous air ? 

^f Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare 

Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt. 

I never was attached to that great sect, 

Whose doctrine is, that each one should select 

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, 

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 

To cold oblivion, though it is the code 

Of modern morals, and the beaten road 

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, 

Who travel to their home among the dead 

By the broad highway of the world, and so 

With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, 

The dreariest and the longest journey go. 

f True Love in this differs from gold and clay, 

That to divide is not to take away. 

Love is like understanding, that grows bright, 

Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, 

228 



Imagination ! which from earth and sky, EPI- 

And from the depths of human phantasy, LOGUE 

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills 

The Universe with glorious beams, and kills 

Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow 

Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow 

The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, 

The life that wears, the spirit that creates 

One object, and one form, and builds thereby 

A sepulchre for its eternity. 

Tf Mind from its object differs most in this : 
Evil from good ; misery from happiness ; 
The baser from the nobler ; the impure 
And frail, from what is clear and must endure. 
If you divide suffering and dross, you may 
Diminish till it is consumed away ; 
If you divide pleasure and love and thought, 
Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not 
How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared : 
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw 
The unenvied light of hope ; the eternal law 
By which those live, to whom this world of life 
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife 
Tills for the promise of a later birth 
The wilderness of this Elysian earth. 

Tf There was a Being whom my spirit oft 

229 



EPI- Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
LOGUE In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves 
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore, 
Under the grey beak of some promontory 
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, 
That I beheld her not. In solitudes 
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, 
And from the fountains, and the odours deep 
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep 
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, 
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air ; 
And from the breezes whether low or loud, 
And from the rain of every passing cloud, 
And from the singing of the summer birds, 
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words 
Of antique verse and high romance, — in form, 
Sound, colour, — in whatever checks that Storm 
Which with the shattered present chokes the past ; 
And in that best philosophy, whose taste 
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom 
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom ; 
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. 

% Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth 
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, 
230 



And towards the loadstar of my one desire, EPI- 

I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight LOGUE 

Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, 

When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere 

A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, 

As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. 

But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, 

Past, like a God throned on a winged planet, 

Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, 

Into the dreary cone of our life's shade ; 

And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, 

I would have followed, though the grave between 

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen : 

When a voice said : O Thou of hearts the weakest, 

The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest. 

Then I — Where ? the world's echo answered where J 

And in that silence, and in my despair, 

I questioned every tongueless wind that flew 

Over my tower of mourning, if it knew 

Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul ; 

And murmured names and spells which have control 

Over the sightless tyrants of our fate ; . 

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate 

The night which closed on her ; nor uncreate 

That world within this chaos, mine and me, 

Of which she was the veiled Divinity, 

The world, I say, of thoughts that worshipped her : 

And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear 

And every gentle passion sick to death, 

231 



EPI- Feeding my course with expectation's breath, 
LOGUE Into the wintry forest of our life ; 

And struggling through its error with vain strife, 

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, 

And half bewildered by new forms, I past 

Seeking among those untaught foresters 

If I could find one form resembling hers, 

In which she might have masked herself from me. 

There, One, whose voice was venomed melody 

Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers ; 

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, 

Her touch was as electric poison, flame 

Out of her looks into my vitals came, 

And from her living cheeks and bosom flew 

A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew 

Into the core of my green heart, and lay 

Upon its leaves ; until, as hair grown grey 

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime 

With ruins of unseasonable time. 

^[ In many mortal forms I rashly sought 
The shadow of that idol of my thought. 
And some were fair — but beauty dies away : 
Others were wise — but honeyed words betray : 
And One was true — oh ! why not true to me ? 
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, 
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, 
Wounded and weak and panting ; the cold day 
Trembled for pity of my strife and pain. 
232 



When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again EPI- 

Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed LOGUE 

As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed, 

As is the Moon, whose changes ever run 

Into themselves, to the eternal Sun ; 

The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright 

isles, 
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles ; 
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame 
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, 
^And warms not but illumines. Young and fair 
As the descended Spirit of that sphere, 
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night 
From its own darkness, until all was bright 
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind ; 
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, 
She led me to a cave in that wild place, 
And sate beside me, with her downward face 
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon 
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. 
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, 
And all my being became bright or dim 
As the Moon' s image in a summer sea, 
According as she smiled or frowned on me ; 
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed : 
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead : 
For at her silver voice came Death and Life, 
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, 
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, 

233 



EPI- The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, 
LOGUE And through the cavern without wings they flew, 
And cried Away, he is not of our crew. 
I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep. 

^J What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, 

Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips 

Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse ; 

And how my soul was as a lampless sea, 

And who was then its Tempest ; and when She, 

The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost 

Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast 

The moving billows of my being fell 

Into a death of ice, immovable ; 

And then — what earthquakes made it gape and split, 

The white Moon smiling all the while on it, 

These words conceal. If not, each word would be 

The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me ! 

Tf At length, into the obscure Forest came 

The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. 

Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns 

Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, 

And from her presence life was radiated 

Through the grey earth and branches bare and dead; 

So that her way was paved, and roofed above 

With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love ; 

And music from her respiration spread 

Like light, — all other sounds were penetrated 

234 



By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, EPI- 

So that the savage winds hung mute around ; LOGUE 

And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair 

Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air : 

Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, 

When light is changed to love, this glorious One 

Floated into the cavern where I lay, 

And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay 

Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below 

As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow 

I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night 

Was penetrating me with living light : 

I knew it was the Vision veiled from me 

So many years — that it was Emily. 

^f Twin spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, 
This world of love, this me ; and into birth 
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart 
Magnetic might into its central heart ; 
And lift its billows and its mists and guide 
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide 
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave ; 
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave 
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers 
The armies of the rainbow-winged showers ; 
And, as those married lights, which from the towers 
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe 
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe ; 
And all their many- mingled influence blend, 

235 



EPI- If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end ; 
LOGUE So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway 

Govern my sphere of being, night and day ! 

Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might ; 

Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light ; 

And, through the shadow of the seasons three, 

From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, 

Light it into the Winter of the tomb, 

Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. 

Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce, 

Who drew the heart of this frail Universe 

Towards thine own ; till, wrecked in that convulsion, 

Alternating attraction and repulsion, 

Thine went astray and that was rent in twain ; 

Oh, float into our azure heaven again ! 

Be there love's folding-star at thy return ; 

The living Sun will feed thee from its urn 

Of golden fire ; the Moon will veil her horn 

In thy last smiles ; adoring Even and Morn 

Will worship thee with incense of calm breath 

And lights and shadows ; as the star of Death 

And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild 

Called Hope and Fear — upon the heart are piled 

Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine 

A World shall be the altar, ^f Lady mine, 

Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth 

Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth 

Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, 

Will be as of the trees of Paradise. 

236 



Tf The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. EPI- 

To whatsoe'er of dull mortality LOGUE 

Is mine, remain a vestal sister still ; 

To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, 

Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united 

Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. 

The hour is come : the destined Star has risen 

Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. 

The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set 

The sentinels — but true love never yet 

Was thus constrained : it overleaps all fence 

Like lightning, with invisible violence 

Piercing its continents ; like Heaven's free breath, 

Which he who grasps can hold not ; liker Death, 

Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way 

Through temple, tower, and palace, and the. array 

Of arms : more strength has love than he or they ; 

For it can burst his charnel, and make free 

The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, 

The soul in dust and chaos, ^f Emily, 

A ship is floating in the harbour now, 

A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow ; 

There is a path on the sea's azure floor, 

No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; 

The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; 

The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles ; 

The merry mariners are bold and free : 

Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? 



Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest 



237 



EPI- Is a far Eden of the purple East ; 
LOGUE And we between her wings will sit, while Night 

And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, 

Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 

Treading each other's heels, unheededly. 

It is an isle under Ionian skies, 

Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 

And, for the harbours are not safe and good, 

This land would have remained a solitude 

But for some pastoral people native there, 

Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air 

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 

Simple and spirited ; innocent and bold. 

The blue iEgean girds this chosen home, 

With ever- changing sound and light and foam, 

Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar ; 

And all the winds wandering along the shore 

Undulate with the undulating tide : 

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ; 

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 

As clear as elemental diamond, 

Of serene morning air ; and far beyond, 

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer 

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year), 

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 

Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls 

Illumining, with sound that never fails 

Accompany the noonday nightingales ; 

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs ; 

238 



The light clear element which the isle wears EPI- 

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, LOGUE 

Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers 

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep ; 

And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 

And dart their arrowy odour through the brain 

Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 

And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, 

With that deep music is in unison : 

Which is a soul within the soul — they seem 

Like echoes of an antenatal dream. 

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, 

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ; 

Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, 

Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. 

It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, 

Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light 

Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they 

Sail onward far upon their fatal way : 

The winged storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm 

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm 

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, 

From which its fields and woods ever renew 

Their green and golden immortality. 

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, 

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, 

Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, 

Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride 

239 



EPI- Glowing at once with love and loveliness, 
LOGUE Blushes and trembles at its own excess : 
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less 
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, 
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile 
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen 
O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, 
Filling their bare and void interstices. 
But the chief marvel of the wilderness 
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how 
None of the rustic island-people know : 
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height 
It overtops the woods ; but, for delight, 
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime 
Had been invented, in the world's young prime, 
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, 
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house 
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. 
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, 
But, as it were Titanic ; in the heart 
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown 
Out of the mountains, from the living stone, 
Lifting itself in caverns light and high : 
For all the antique and learned imagery 
Has been erased, and in the place of it 
The ivy and the wild- vine interknit 
The volumes of their many twining stems ; 
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems 
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky 
240 



Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery EPI- 

With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, LOGUE 

Or fragments of the day's intense serene ; 

Working mosaic on their Parian floors. 

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers 

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem 

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream 

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all 

that we 
Read in their smiles, and call reality. 

^| This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed 

Thee to be lady of the solitude. 

And I have fitted up some chambers there 

Looking towards the golden Eastern air, 

And level with the living winds, which flow 

Like waves above the living waves below. 

I have sent books and music there, and all 

Those instruments with which high spirits call 

The future from its cradle, and the past 

Out of its grave, and make the present last 

In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, 

Folded within their own eternity. 

Our simple life wants little, and true taste 

Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste 

The scene it would adorn, and therefore still 

Nature with all her children haunts the hill. 

The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet 

Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit 

Q 241 



EPI- Round the evening tower and the young stars glance 
LOGUE Between the quick bats in their twilight dance ; 
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight 
Before our gate, and the slow silent night 
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. 
Be this our home in life, and when years heap 
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, 
Let us become the overhanging day, 
The living soul of this Elysian isle, 
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile 
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, 
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, 
And wander in the meadows, or ascend 
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend 
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour ; 
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, 
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea 
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, 
Possessing and possest by all that is 
Within that calm circumference of bliss, 
And by each other, till to love and live 
Be one : or, at the noontide hour, arrive 
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep 
The moonlight of the expired night asleep, 
Through which the awakened day can never peep ; 
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, 
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights ; 
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain 
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. 
242 



And we will talk, until thought's melody EPI- 

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die LOGUE 

In words, to live again in looks, which dart 
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, 
Harmonising silence without a sound. 
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, 
And our veins beat together ; and our lips, 
With other eloquence than words, eclipse 
The soul that burns between them ; and the wells 
Which boil under our being's inmost cells, 
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be 
Confused in passion's golden purity, 
As mountain-springs under the morning Sun. 
We shall become the same, we shall be one 
Spirit within two frames, oh ! wherefore two ? 
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, 
Till like two meteors of expanding flame, 
Those spheres instinct with it become the same, 
Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still 
Burning, yet ever inconsumable : 
In one another's substance finding food, 
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued 
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, 
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away : 
One hope within two wills, one will beneath 
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, 
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, 
And one annihilation. Woe is me ! 
The winged words on which my soul would pierce 

243 



EPI- Into the height of Love's rare Universe, 

LOGUE Are chains of lead around its flight of fire 
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 



244 



WEAK Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, EPI- 

And say : We are the masters of thy slave ; LOGUE 

What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ? 

Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, 

All singing loud : Love's very pain is sweet. 

But its reward is in the world divine 

Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave. 

So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste 

Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 

Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, 

And bid them love each other and be blest : 

And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, 

And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. 



245 



ENVOI 



MUSIC, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory — 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
Love itself shall slumber on. 



EXPLICIT 

248 



TABLE OF YEARS 



1815 A SUMMER EVENING 
ALASTOR 

1816 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 

MONT BLANC 

1 817 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM 
PRINCE ATHANASE 

DEATH : 

That time is dead for ever, child 

THE DEAD 

1818 PASSAGE OF THE APENNINE 

Listen, listen, Mary mine 
THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
STANZAS 
THE PAST 

18 19 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 
ODE TO THE WEST WIND 
A SERENADE 

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 

1820 THE CLOUD 
TO A SKYLARK 
ODE TO LIBERTY 
ARETHUSA 

250 



1 820 (Continued) 

SONG OF PROSERPINE 
HYMN OF APOLLO 
HYMN OF PAN 
THE QUESTION 
TO THE MOON 
AUTUMN 

DEATH : 

First our pleasures die — and then 

LIBERTY 

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS 

TIME LONG PAST 

1821 EPIPSYCHIDION 
ADONAIS 

TO NIGHT 

FROM THE ARABIC 

TIME 

MUTABILITY 

SONG 

ENVOI 

A LAMENT: 

O world ! O life ! O time ! 
A LAMENT: 

Swifter far than summer's flight 

251 



1821 (Continued) 

A BRIDAL SONG 

TO JANE: 

When passion's trance is overpast 

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 

TO JANE: 

One word is too often profaned 

HELLAS 

1822 THE GIFT 

THE INVITATION 

THE RECOLLECTION 

LINES 

A DIRGE 

LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF 
LERICI 



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